


K for Kissing

by opalescentdaydream



Category: Voltron - Fandom, Voltron: Legendary Defender, v:ld, vld - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Friends to Lovers, Gay Keith (Voltron), M/M, Minor Hunk/Lance (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron), Slow Build, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, University, mention of alcoholism, mention of trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-01-20 09:03:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12429498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalescentdaydream/pseuds/opalescentdaydream
Summary: Keith, Hunk, and Lance enter Garrison University as sophomores, ready to take on their second year in their new residence hall, Alfor. But, an unexpected advisor might throw a wrench in Keith's studies and lead him down a surprising path... lined with Christmas lights.





	1. New Year, New Keith

"If you poke me one more time, you lose the finger."

Lance hesitated, already inching towards another nudge in Keith’s arm. He groaned and shuffled the loaded backpack between his shoulders.

“C’mon, dude,” he begged. “I’m so bored, I might die. Hunk’s been gone for like, half of my lifetime and you’re all I have left.”

Keith took a step back. “It’s going to be a lonely second half of your lifetime.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“And you’re dramatic." He dragged his duffle bag across the sidewalk and under his feet, comparing his ragged sack of clothes, a sheet, and his old blanket to Lance’s three suitcases and bursting cardboard boxes. Keith couldn’t say he was unprepared, considering he brought everything he owned.

“Maybe Hunk got lost,” Lance ventured. Keith could see the gears whirring in Lance’s head as his eyes brightened and his hand was poised at his chin. With the agitation and cramping of an old injury before a storm, he felt the tangent coming.

“I bet it was an elaborate set-up, probably by the government. Maybe FAFSA is just a ploy, a cover operation for dissecting the brains of college students. Maybe they compare the kids who don’t need tuition loans to the ones who do, and Hunk was just the first in a long line of test subjects…”

Lance was still rambling, but Keith allowed himself to stop listening as more an act of self-preservation than annoyance. He turned to the building behind them, a square, brick structure that looked more like a prison than a university. The only difference was the lack of bars on the windows. “Alfor Hall,” was carved in ancient script above the entrance, and a pair of open, chipped green doors led down the fluorescent hallway. A sheet of paper was taped to one of them with a quickly drawn arrow pointing inside, reading beside it in neat scrawl, “To the end of the corridor and to the left for room keys!”

“…aliens were totally responsible for 9/11. And, that’s how they’ll get us, once they figure who has alien blood and who doesn’t—”

“Lance.”

“What?”

Keith hefted his bag with one arm and nodded towards the inside. “We should see if Hunk needs help. It’s been a while.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lance bobbed along. “I was about to say, if they haven’t already sucked the secret human knowledge out of his brain, we should get in there and give him a hand.”

Keith went ahead, Lance following as he dragged his overburdened moving dolly down the linoleum. After a wrong turn and accidentally discovering the vicious air hockey tournament in the rec room, they found themselves at the resident advisers’ desk and Hunk laughing with the girl on shift. She sat before a mountain of paperwork and spoke through a wide, toothy mouth. In the cheap lighting, her eyes seemed yellow, but when she glanced at her workload they gleamed a honey brown. Her neck and biceps were broad, muscular, and didn’t allow Keith to doubt she could break up a resident fight.

“Hey,” Keith said.

Hunk whirled around with a goofy grin. “Hey guys! Oh, man, I’m so sorry I didn’t come get you sooner. This is Shay, one of the RAs. She was telling me about all the new events on campus this year, and I guess I got distracted by the engineering competition, and, uh, what else was there?”

Shay poked her head out from Hunk’s side, “There’s a charity bake sale, and the dorm’s putting on a Halloween dance. We haven’t had one since 2011, when the seniors teepee’d every floor while the advisers were having difficulties with the karaoke machine.”

Lance abandoned the dolly to put his arm around Hunk’s waist.

“Karaoke? Count us in!” he cheered, using his free hand to hit Hunk with yet another dead-on high five. Over the summer, Keith asked Hunk how they never struck out, how they never fumbled. Hunk shrugged, “It’s all about the chemistry, I guess. Lance and I were already pretty synced up before we started dating, but now? I don’t think we _could_ miss. It’s kind of our thing.”

Shay requested their names, tapping at the station’s outdated computer and swiveling between it and the corkboard of keys behind her.

Hunk and Lance filed to room together this year after living separately the last two semesters, their freshman year. They figured it would be good for them, high school senior sweethearts, to have some space while attending the same college. They stuck like glue anyway, and practically lived in each other's dorms. Their roommates definitely minded.

“Okay, that’s 412, fourth floor,” she beamed as she passed them a pair of key rings. “And what about you?” Shay looked to Keith.

“Uh, Kogane, Keith Kogane. I’m in a single, I think.”

“Sure thing!” Shay’s fingers were a flurry across the keyboard, her constant smile lessening as she confirmed his room.

“When did you apply for your housing?” she asked.

“Um,” Keith mumbled, “about a month ago.”

Shay’s voice softened. “Unfortunately, the only space left for a registration that late is one of our… converted dorms.”

“Converted?” Lance wondered, moving away from Hunk and perching his elbow on the rounded counter of the semi-circle desk. “Converted into a really sweet pad that’s totally forgiving of students who forgot to sign up until a day before the deadline?”

“Er…” Shay winced, “Converted from a third-floor janitor’s closet into a spare room.”

The elevator ride up was one Keith could’ve done without. Lance and Hunk, while admittedly doing their best, were not a huge help.

“There’s no way it’s that bad,” Hunk said with his arm settled on Lance’s shoulder. “I mean, it has to be good enough to rent to a student, right?”

“Yeah,” Lance agreed and patted Hunk, “but that doesn’t mean it won’t suck ass.”

Hunk hissed, “Dude. That’s not making him feel better."

“I can’t lie to him! I wouldn’t want to live in that even if it was free." 

“You don’t have to say so!”

“So, you want me to lie? To my own best friend, who I’ve known since third grade?”

“We’re not best friends," Keith interjected.

“To my own rival, who I’ve competed with since third grade?”

“Count this as a win, if you want,” Keith hoisted his bag onto his back as the elevator’s metal doors creaked open with a _ding!_

Hunk and Lance stumbled into the hall after him.

“Do you want us to come with you?” Hunk offered.

Keith shook his head and threw a glance behind him, “Nah, I’m fine. See you guys at six for dinner?”

“Yeah,” Lance said, “if you’re not full on all those cockroaches. Oof!” Hunk knocked what was left of Lance’s breath out with a sharp elbow to his side.

“You know it’s a shithole though, right?” he heard Lance whisper.

“Duh,” Hunk said, his voice deep enough to carry up and down the hall. “But I don’t want Keith to think—”

“I can still hear you guys,” Keith called, rounding the corner and not looking back.

The slap of a hand against a jacket sleeve and Lance’s cry of surprise echoed throughout the floor.

All in all, it wasn’t that bad. And he didn’t have to share. But, sure, it was cramped. The bed, a bare mattress supported by a wooden frame and slats, stood to the left and reached from wall to wall vertically. The desk was wedged between its side and the right wall, forming the most inconvenient upside-down letter L, and Keith was pretty sure he was supposed to have a dresser. Or, a normal room was supposed to have a dresser. Instead, he had a second door to a walk-in closet. If you could walk into a closet that was half a foot deep. His carpet was a dingy, greying brown, though Keith could see the original beige color around the edges of his closet floor. As he dropped his light luggage on the naked bed, he noticed the hundred something pinholes in what he assumed were originally hospital white walls, though they were now stained by colorful mystery splatters.

But, no cockroaches.

He said as much waiting in the line for dinner, the kids in front of them chugging along as the cafeteria worker swiped their meal cards, much to Lance’s disbelief. They entered the buffet and stuffed themselves on mediocre, lukewarm food, and desserts that were probably frozen until about two hours prior. They loitered at their table in comfortable silence. Hunk and Lance’s hands were tangled together as they texted their parents with their free thumbs, and Keith pushed his glitching Android to scroll through his class schedule for the tenth time. Biology 312K, English Rhetoric 302D, Government 321A… Keith had fifteen credits settled for the upcoming semester, and a scholarship requiring a 3.5 GPA to maintain.

“Dude, stop stressing,” Lance said, his eyes flickering from his own phone to Keith’s. “You’re freaking yourself out.”

“Do you even know where you’re going on Monday?” Keith snapped.

Hunk answered, “Nope. He doesn’t. We’ll find our classes tomorrow. You wanna come with?”

“Yeah. Sure,” Keith settled in his seat and flipped his locked phone face down on the cafeteria table. “I mean, I’m fine. I just need this scholarship, or I don’t go to school anymore. No big deal. I hear working a car wash is fun nowadays. No degree required.”

A voice intruded, “Actually, they have machines running car washes now. You’re better off applying for a cashier’s position at Target.”

A girl, scrawny with an unruly mess of sandy blonde hair cropped around the bottoms of her ears, stood behind Keith’s chair. She clutched a dirty plate and glass like she realized she made a terrible, horrifying mistake, and started to scuttle towards the dish return conveyor belt.

“Hey, wait!” Lance shouted after her. She froze with her shoulders hunched around her jaw and her knees locked. “Where are you going? Tell us more about car washes!”

She inched around like a tinman creaky with rust. “Uh,” she stumbled over her words, “I’m just saying… they have machines for car washes now. You swipe your credit card, and it’ll tell you where to stop and stuff. I’m not an expert, though, uh…” she pushed her glasses up her nose with the bend of her wrist.

“But, like, what about the sponges on the sticks? Who does that? You can’t tell me a robot uses the sponge stick,” Lance took his hand from Hunk’s and crossed his arms over his chest. Hunk and Keith recognized the stubborn set of his jaw, and the heavy skepticism his stare localized on the new girl.

She raised an eyebrow. “They don’t need the _mop_ because they drag those big strips of fabric all over the surface.”

Keith snorted. “Sponge stick?”

Lance pointedly ignored him and zeroed in on her. “Who splashes buckets of water on the car? Who rinses it off?”

The girl squinted at Lance, “Buckets of water? No one’s used buckets since the ‘50’s. They spray it down. When was the last time you went to a car wash?”

A fire twisted in his gut, and Lance’s cheeks reddened. He slammed the tabletop. “When was the last time _you—”_

“Okay!” Hunk interrupted, “Um, hi. I’m Hunk. This is my boyfriend, Lance, and our friend Keith.” His vision darted between the two of them, the tension gurgling at the back of his throat.

The girl nodded at him. “I’m Pidge.”

Lance leaned away with a scoff, “What kind of name is that? Sounds like ‘smidge.’”

Hunk intervened, again, “Want to sit with us?”

Pidge sized up the table and her used plate. She shrugged, “Nah, I’m good. What hall are you guys in?”

“Alfor,” Keith said. “You?”

“The same. You know there’s an RA meeting tomorrow morning?” she asked.

They shook their heads.

“You should think about going since, y’know, they’ll fine you if you don’t. See you there,” Pidge said, and they waved goodbye.

Lance watched from the cafeteria window as she left the building and marched to the dorm, her hands stuffed in her over-sized jacket pockets. He muttered, “Yeah, see you there. See you in Hell.”

Hunk gave him a shove, “Shut up. You were rude.”

“I don’t care, she started it! Don’t think I’m not googling all there is to know about car washes tonight.”

“Wouldn’t doubt it,” Hunk sighed.

They parted ways on Keith’s floor. He left Hunk with Lance still rambling about windshield wipers or something; Keith wasn’t listening. At the back of his hall, sound effects and the telltale shouting of video games boomed, and music thumped at the front. In an effort to ignore both, he settled into his unmade bed with headphones on and an alarm set, refusing to bother unpacking, and sprawled across his mattress.

Saturday morning, he met Hunk and Lance in the first floor lobby.

“Isn’t that what you wore yesterday?” Lance gestured to Keith from top to bottom.

He countered, “How much of your night did you spend on carwashfacts.com? Looking at you, it could’ve been years.”

With a snort, Hunk herded them into the rec room. It was chocked full of freshmen and a few older faces Keith recognized from his basic classes last year, but lacked anyone he could place as an upperclassman. They fell onto the left couch of the three pushed into a U at the center, and noted the dust that exploded from the sagging, vomit green cushions. Pidge shoved her way through a cluster of kids.

“Hey,” she said. “Did you sign in?”

Keith tilted from his corner, Hunk in the middle and Lance on the other end, to answer, “No. Do we have to?”

“Yeah.” Pidge plopped in the adjacent spot, the last open on the middle coach. “You can do it once this is over, though.”

They sat in silence. Pidge fidgeted with the orange ends of her jacket. Keith stared ahead, and waited. And waited. And waited.

“How long have we been here?” he asked aside.

Hunk clicked his phone. “About two minutes.”

It took a total of five for Shay to enter with a clipboard in hand and an apologetic smile.

“Hi, everyone!” She greeted. The chatter of the residents fell away as they took their seats at tables along the rec room walls and on the molding carpet. “Sorry for the wait, and thank you for your patience! Takashi and I are so happy to have you, and hope you’ll find a home here in Alfor. If you haven’t already, sign-in on the sheet at the front desk so we can count you present. A fee of fifty dollars will be added to your bill if you don’t, so, please, remember to do so! My name is Shay, I’m from the small town of Balmera a couple hundred miles from campus, and I’m a junior majoring in geophysics. And, I’m one of the building’s two RAs. The other is my good friend, Takashi.”

She stepped to the side and the second RA joined her at the front. He stood tall and proud, the front, white streak of his hair shaggy and much longer than his undercut. Keith watched his mouth move and the edges of his eyes crinkle as he joked. His grin was sharp, quick, and gone in a flash. But, he was at ease. He oozed comfortable leadership like he was born into it. There was something about the way he moved, something fluid. It was hypnotic.

A jab prodded Keith in his side. He looked to Hunk, who watched with a hunch in his eyebrow.

“Are you okay?” Hunk mouthed.

Keith reabsorbed the room. He nodded.

“…and we should be fine,” Takashi said, and they laughed pleasantly. “I live on the third floor this year and if you have any problems, feel free to stop by. But, remember, you should only come to me after you’ve tried to work it out among yourselves first.” He looked to Shay, who tapped the top of her clipboard and winked.

“Oh, right. My name is Takashi Shirogane, but you can call me Shiro. I’m a senior here at Garrison University, majoring in Social Work with Honors. I graduate this spring.” The group applauded, and he brushed them off. “Thank you, but I’m not gone yet. You’ll be dealing with me for the next nine months, whether you like it or not.” The students chuckled again.

Nine months? Keith could bear the burden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyo!! this is my first big fic that i've like........,,,,actually outlined and planned ahead to complete lol. hopefully it all goes well and u guys enjoy!!
> 
> might be incredibly self indulgent. but o well, what else is fanfic for? winky face


	2. It's Not You, It's Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chance encounters? Or destiny?

Keith was out of breath, sweating, and shirtless when he answered the pounding against his door.

“Uh… hi. How’s it going?”

Takashi Shirogane stood on the other side. His basketball shorts hung loosely from his waist, and his hair was a disheveled sweep across his forehead. His tank top read, “Suns Out / Guns Out,” and finding the various holes and uneven stretches in its cotton, Keith assumed it had been a part of Shiro’s wardrobe long before he enrolled at Garrison University.

“Hey,” Keith panted. “What’s up?” He forced nonchalance into his wheezing, and made the conscious effort to focus on Shiro’s face.

Shiro reached an arm behind his head and scratched at the back of his neck. Keith focused harder.

Shiro said, “I got a noise complaint from the guys below you, saying they heard a lot of thumping. Would you mind… keeping it down, I guess? They weren’t sure what was going on.”

“Oh, yeah. No problem,” Keith agreed in a rush. He moved to shut the door with the start of a wave, but Shiro wedged his bare foot between it and the frame.  

“Just wondering,” Shiro added, “what  _were_  you doing? You know you can’t have girls in here past ten on Sundays, right?”

“Girls?” Keith’s eyebrows furrowed for a second. He paled and hacked out a laugh. “Yeah, no, girls definitely won’t be a problem for me. I mean, for my room. I mean… I’m the only one here.”

Shiro nodded, and gave the door nudge. Keith allowed it to swing open and stepped back into his cramped bedroom, revealing his clothes jutting haphazardly from the half-opened closet, and his sheets wrinkled into a navy-blue mess on top of the dorm mattress. It wasn’t clean, but it was Keith, and Keith alone. Shiro scoffed and grinned wolfishly.

“What?” Keith asked.

Shiro pointed at the loose sheet, “Didn’t your mom ever teach you how to make a bed?”

“No. She left when I was eight.”

“…I…”

Shiro fumbled over his tongue and sucked in a breath through his teeth. His joking turned shame, and he shied from the doorway. “I’m sorry. That was out of line. Let me know if you want to talk to one of the university counselors, I can help you set up an appointment. Anything you say there is completely confidential, and—”

Keith chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. It’s been, like, eleven years. I’m messing with you.”

“Oh!” Relief drained the tension from Shiro’s stiff shoulders, and he quirked a stunted smile. “That’s a good one, I guess,” his laugh was halting and uncomfortable. “Okay. Well, keep it down, and I’ll see you around…?”

“Keith,” he said.

“Keith. Thanks.” Shiro waved, and vanished into the hallway with the click of Keith’s closed door.

The space darkened without him. Keith groaned internally. Cheesy. Shiro had been there for all of two, maybe three minutes. Nothing was different. Nothing, except the spurt of butterflies bouncing around Keith’s ribcage. Again.

He first noticed them at the resident advisers’ meeting. After Shay and Shiro gave their presentations and went back and forth reading different sections of the residents’ handbook, most of which Keith hadn’t heard in favor of watching the deft moves of Shiro’s fingers flipping through the booklet’s pages, they had milled around the residents and introduced themselves to handfuls at a time. The closer Shiro got to Keith’s group of Hunk, Pidge, and Lance, the more Keith felt his veins turning themselves inside out.

“I’m gonna sign us in,” Keith tossed his words like a grenade and lurched out of the rec room. From the RA’s desk, he could see Shiro chatting with Lance, Pidge… and where was Hunk?

“Hi."

Keith jumped, “Fuck, Hunk. Don’t do that.”

Hunk crowded around Keith’s shoulder and ignored him. “So, you're avoiding the new RA?” Keith cursed sitting next to him on that couch, and he blamed… something about Hunk for his good-natured perception. Something about Hunk that gave him the gift of reading people. Something about Hunk that made him easy to talk to, and the keeper of some of Keith’s medium-sized secrets. Not the big ones. But, more than the few he peppered into his friendship with Lance.

“No. I wanted to do this before we forgot. You know I don’t have fifty extra dollars for the fee.” Keith refrained from glancing into the rec room again, where Shiro laughed heartily at whatever Pidge said. The needling in his stomach definitely did not want to know what it was that made Shiro howl like that. Except it did.

“Uh-huh,” Hunk cuddled up to Keith’s right side, leaving his left free to look on.

 “You think I’m lying about being poor?”

“Yeah, that's it.” Hunk oozed sarcasm, and he was getting it all over the counter. He rolled his eyes, “We both know that’s not why you’re hiding over here. Why don’t you talk to him? Now’s your chance.”

Keith penciled in their names on the sign-up sheet with stubborn concentration. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Whatever, man. But you know I’m here for you, right?” Hunk landed his big, soft hand on Keith’s back.

“Uh, I guess?”

“Good. See you in there.” Hunk patted him and headed into the lion’s den. Keith’s stare followed as Hunk joined Lance with a kiss on the cheek and introduced himself to Shiro. It was that easy. Watching Shiro be so casually genuine, so easily himself, left a light, jittery feeling in his chest. Yet, Keith loitered outside until the group emerged.

“Where’d you go?” Lance asked as Keith rejoined them in the hall.

“Long line.” he didn’t move to give any more detail, and Lance dropped it with a loud, obnoxious change of topic.

Now, Keith lay on his back, tracing the cracks in his ceiling with an absent gaze, and settled his hands on his bare chest. There was nothing to do anything about. Shiro was just a superior. Yeah, that was it. He made Keith nervous because he was in a position of power. Totally. Shiro was totally in charge and Keith was totally nervous about being fined and money. Totally. Groaning and rubbing his palms into his eyes, he tried to accept what was obviously bullshit. No, it wasn’t. At least that last part was right—he was definitely anxious about his college fund.

Keith’s phone vibrated on the corner of his desk, and he slapped his thumb over the home button. Hunk was texting his way through the group chat between the three of them, sending goodnight stickers and reminders: “See you guys in the student union for chicken sandwiches tomorrow at twelve thirty!”

Lance replied, “We’re in the same room, doofus. But yeah, you’ll see us.” He trailed off with a string of emojis that included too many hearts and sparkles for Keith to stomach. With as little thought as there were characters, Keith sent, “K,” muted the message group, and slumped from his bed to hit the light switch. One bonus to his tiny space was the number of steps it took to get from one end to the other; Keith could turn out the lights and jump back into bed with one large leap. He chucked himself into his sheet and blanket and tossed onto his stomach with a grunt.

The alarm was set to ring at ten the next morning, giving him just under eight hours of sleep and enough time to scramble to his first class of the semester, Bio 312K. He faded into blackness with thoughts of Shiro’s muscles racing through his head, but that had nothing to do with a crush, a crush he did not have. They were just big. Yeah. Big, and tight. And really visible in his tank top. Normal resident-adviser stuff.

**BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.**

Keith didn’t remember buying an emergency alert system for an alarm, but he would’ve believed it with the blare of his phone. He struggled to lift his head from the mattress, but silenced the alarm through his sleep-blurred vision and swung his feet to the floor. Keith snatched his toothbrush and paste and shuffled down the hall to the communal bath. A couple pairs of feet were using the sinks as well, but the overgrown mullet and exhaustion kept Keith from recognizing them. Once back in his dorm, he stuffed himself into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt crumpled on his closet floor, and used the front-facing camera of his phone to tame the ins and outs of his hair.

Keith strapped his backpack on with wider eyes and his senses more alert. He marched into the hallway and locked the door behind him, only to hear someone at the other end of the hall doing the same. He left the wing and waited for the building’s elevator. Soon after, that someone else joined him. Keith sneaked a glance through the mess of his bangs edging into his eyes, and recognized the sharp, firm jaw and fluff of white hair. He cleared his throat.

“Hey,” Shiro smiled. God, not the smile. It melded Keith’s vocal chords together and left him grunting.

“Mm,” Keith gave him an acknowledging nod. Stupid.

“What class are you going to?” Shiro asked. The elevator doors parted as he spoke, and he allowed Keith to stumble inside first.

“Biology. It’s my last science credit,” Keith mumbled. Why was he mumbling? Use your fucking words. Ugh.

He pushed the button for the lobby before Shiro had the chance, cutting him off in the process.

“Ah,” Shiro chuckled, “too slow. I’ll get you next time.”

“We’ll see.” Keith ground his teeth together to keep himself from grinning a big, stupid, moronic, doofy grin. “What about you?”

Shiro leaned into the back corner of the elevator with his arms behind him, propped against the metal railing. “Biology, too. 312K with Professor Slav.”

Keith nodded, again. Dumb. All he did was nod. “Same.” How stupid could he sound?

“Cool.” Shiro was all smiles. Keith feared his face would break from the volume of his niceness. “We should sit together.”

“Uh, sure, I guess,” Keith shrugged. Okay. Fine. That wasn't completely dorky.

“’You guess?’ Come on, kid. I’m definitely The Bio Master on campus. You could do a lot worse.” Shiro scoffed as they landed on the first floor.

“The Bio Master? If you’re the master, why are you taking 312K as a senior?” It was Keith’s turn to scoff.

Shiro held the door for him as they left Alfor, and they walked side by side towards the science departments. Bustling students raced past and the noise level shattered the peaceful quiet that had fallen over the green when Keith arrived Friday. He kept his eyes trained ahead on the turns and hills of campus, refusing to make lingering eye contact with his adviser that he had totally platonic, fear-based feelings for.

Shiro said, “Because I procrastinated until this year. Not to mention Professor Slav’s was the only class left, and I’ve heard he’s pretty particular about his work. But, I would call myself The Bio Master to anyone. Not only did I get credit for Biology 312J, I aced it.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Everyone aces Biology 312J. It’s the easiest of the core curriculum. That’s like saying you’re not just good at breathing, but you do it every day.” They turned a corner, nearing the STEM buildings. Minutes passed, though again, Keith felt them drag on like hours. What had he done? Did Shiro get sarcasm, teasing? What if he didn’t?

He rushed ahead when they were within four feet of their building’s front door and held it for Shiro, who raised his eyebrows with a competitive gleam.

He joked, “I underestimated you.”

Keith snorted. Of course he snorted. What’s the most embarrassing sound you could make? Don’t worry, Keith made it. It’s snorting. He snorted.

They climbed the stairs to the second story, and found themselves waiting outside the lecture hall with a line of thirty other students holding out for the previous class to file from the room. In that time, Shiro pulled a pack of gum from his backpack and offered a strip to Keith.

Keith accepted with a quiet, “Thanks,” and abstained from wondering if Shiro meant something by it.

Professor Slav arrived at precisely eleven o’ clock. He was a short man of five feet even, and wore the biggest glasses Keith had ever seen on a real person. They were the size of Keith’s palms minimum, and framed with thick black metal. Behind them sat similarly large, unblinking brown eyes on either side of a hooked nose and below his balding head. He compensated with a wiry, massive grey beard spiraling in all directions. When he entered the classroom, he commanded with nervous insistence and urged the last professor to leave as it was now his time. His students worked their way in, some whispering about his signature turtleneck – “I heard he has seven identical sweaters.”  “My sorority sister told me it’s just one sweater that he washes every night.” – some hoping he’d take it easy – “He’s retiring next year. Maybe he won’t give us as much work.” “Doubt it.” – but most sitting next to each other in silence, texting or scrolling to avoid conversation. Shiro and Keith were tossed into the middle row of the rising lecture hall with empty seats on either side of them, dead center.

As the class settled and Professor Slav began introducing himself, Shiro pulled a five-subject notebook from his bag, and Keith ripped loose paper from his backpack’s pocket. They scribbled down the generic syllabus information, office hours, late policies, and project dates, and began to fade in and out of attention with the drone of Slav’s voice. Keith’s face was drooping against the support of his palm when he felt something tickle his arm. Shiro poked a scrap of paper at him.

Keith took it, quizzically, and unfolded the torn corner. In Shiro’s firm, neat print, it read: “Bio 312K? More like Bio 312Kill Me :)”

He turned to Shiro hesitantly. Shiro stared back, radiating pride and a sense of accomplishment in the smug curl of his mouth. Keith whispered, “What are you, twelve?”

They returned to Slav’s opening lecture on the importance of biology in the larger scheme of science, or, Shiro thought they did. Under the guise of notetaking, Keith smiled to himself and scribbled along the back of Shiro’s joke. When he was finished, he slipped it under Shiro’s pen and waited for his response.

 With Keith’s eyes on the front of the room and Slav pacing from end to end of the whiteboard, he only heard Shiro’s muffled laughter and didn’t get the chance to witness it.

He felt the paper sitting on top of his arm again. Keith flipped the note to his side, where he’d drawn Professor Slav as an owl with monstrous glasses and a beard so long that it traveled off the scrap. Shiro cramped his reply in the margins: “That’s so funny! Do you want to eat lunch together after class?”

Keith wondered if Professor Slav could see how red his cheeks were from the bottom of the lecture hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY......had to repost this chapter bc it kept cutting off where microsoft word had created an emoji and ao3 couldnt handle it lmao. but anyway! hi! it's been a month since i put up chapter 1, and college has been kicking my butt! BUT i'm still goin! do you think keith will say yes? do you think keith will burst into flames before he can answer? LET ME KNO IN THE COMMENTS ;)))


	3. Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith's secret platonic crush may not be so secret, and not so platonic. But didn't we already know that?

Professor Slav ended class with a loud clap of his hands, or, allowed the cacophony of backpacks zipping within the final two minutes to be excused. Shiro dog-eared the last page of his notes and tucked it into his bag, looking to Keith and asking again, “So, feel like grabbing some food?”

Keith felt his cheeks heating, and prayed to whatever cosmic entity they weren’t as tomato red as he imagined. He shoved his papers – the doodles they passed included – into his pocket. “Um, not today. My friends are waiting for me.”

“Oh,” Shiro stood and gave Keith’s shoulder a pat, “no worries. See you around, Keith.” He exited the row, leaving with a quick salute and Keith’s earthly tether as he replayed the way Shiro said his name over and over.

It’s not like Shiro hadn’t said it before, but this time there was an easy friendship to his voice, and Keith clung to that. He was still hearing it as he blankly crossed campus, and nearly ran straight into Pidge as he mindlessly came up to the second floor of the student union.

“Hey, watch where you’re going,” Pidge grumbled. She spun around to Keith, and stood on her tip-toes to snap her fingers in front of his face. “Hello? This is Earth reporting, come in, Zombie?”

Keith jumped when her hand appeared at the bottom of his nose, and rolled his eyes. “What’re you doing here?”

Pidge stared back, “Uh, eating? What else? Hunk texted and asked if I wanted to sit with you guys. I’m trying to see how worked up I can get Lance in a single sitting.”

“Of course he did. Well, Hunk and Lance aren’t here yet, so we could grab a table,” Keith offered, readjusting his backpack.

“Sure,” Pidge shrugged. They wandered among the food court and the influx of students rushing the lunch hour until they snagged four empty seats in the back corner between Ice, Ice, Baby’s popsicles and Thick Bessie’s burgers. Pidge poked at her cell phone while intermittently glancing up at Keith, who remained as distracted as when he first ran into her. His face was in a static glaze, but he caught Pidge peeking every once in a while. The last time she looked, he checked the time. They’d been sitting together in quiet for six or seven minutes, and he noted she wiggled from side to side every so often, fidgeting with her fingers above the table.

“Uh…” he started, “what’s your major?”

Pidge pushed her glasses up with her middle finger. “Computer engineering. What about you?”

“Undeclared,” he said. “Are you a freshman, or-?”

She shook her head. “I’m a junior…and I can tell from your very bushy and confused eyebrows that you don’t believe me.”

Keith sat up straighter. “No, I believe you. It’s just that you look…”

“Like a fifth grader?”

“I was going to say ‘young,’” Keith almost smiled.

So did Pidge. “I skipped a couple grades. I’m seventeen.”

“Oh.” Keith leaned back in his chair. “Have you been here for three years, or did you come in with enough credit?”

“This is my first semester,” Pidge shrugged, again. “I guess I’m lucky I busted in on a conversation that included Hunk. I gave him my number at the RA meeting, and he hasn’t stopped messaging me since. I don’t think I could resist being his friend if I tried, and my parents were afraid this was going to be a very lonely year.”

Keith nodded, “Lance and I met him as freshmen in high school, and he’s the only reason we passed Home-Ec.”

Pidge snorted, a significantly dorkier sound from her than Keith, he decided, but fitting. “So, Hunk did Lance’s cooking for him and that’s that? ‘Food is the way to a man’s heart', and everything?”

“No way,” Keith scoffed, “It took Lance three years to realize he liked him, and until we were seniors to ask him out. I wanted to puke every second of their honeymoon phase.”

Pidge scrunched her nose with disgust. “Bleh. I bet. What do they call each other in their contacts?”

Keith heard a commotion from the second floor’s entrance. He looked over, and waved Pidge’s eyes in the same direction, “Ask ‘em yourself.”

Hunk and Lance shuffled through the labyrinth of plastic chairs and dining tables, holding hands and arguing with a boom that drew most of the cafeteria’s attention.

“I’m just saying, there’s no way Sharknado could beat Crocosaurus. It’s just a bunch of flying sharks, and Crocosaurus _lives in the water_ ,” Lance gestured wildly.

“It is _not_ ‘just a bunch of flying sharks!’ Sharknado is a tornado! Of! Sharks! It could easily slice through Crocosaurus. There’s no way it could catch or eat that many sharks and not get chopped up pretty bad,” Hunk debated, a heat in his voice Keith only remembered hearing in similar SyFy channel movie disputes, and when Lance purposely mispronounced food words, namely the Gyro Argument of 2015.

They saw Keith’s mullet from across the room, waved, and headed in his direction.

Lance continued, “You think a bunch of sky sharks can penetrate Crocosaurus’s outer layer? Baby, I love you, but that’s ridic- what is she doing here?!”

He finally caught sight of Pidge as they rounded one of the cafeteria’s pillars, and recoiled immediately. They stopped in front of the table, and Hunk squeezed Lance’s hand in a knuckle-cracking vice.

“I asked if Pidge wanted to hang with us,” Hunk beamed. “I’m so glad you made it.”

“Ow,” Lance whimpered at Hunk’s side. “Could I talk to you in private for one second?”

“Sure,” Hunk released his grip, Lance rubbing his fingers tenderly, and they bustled around in a two-person huddle.

Keith mouthed, “Sorry,” to her, but Pidge smirked and waited.

Hunk and Lance whispered back and forth in what sounded harsher than their sci-fi fight, and ended with Lance swiveling to the table in defeat.

“What kind of sandwiches do you want?” Lance asked with a sigh. Hunk ahem’d, and prodded Lance in the side.

Lance crossed his arms. “ _And_ … do you want to help me carry them, Smidge?”

Hunk coughed behind Lance’s back, and whatever maneuver he pulled caused Lance to throw up his arms and squeal.

“Pidge! There!” He jerked his hands to his waist and scowled. “Is that what you wanted?”

“Yes,” happy as a clam, Hunk faced their friends again. Once Lance took their orders, he plodded behind Pidge to Chicky Chow, the union’s sandwich restaurant. Pidge tossed a devilish smile over her shoulder, and Keith caught it with a short laugh.

“How was your first class?” Hunk asked as he worked his way into the seat beside him.

Keith’s ears burned. “It was fine.”

“Which one was it again?”

“Biology.”

“Yeah? Who was your professor?” Hunk set his backpack on the tabletop, and glanced between his folders and Keith as he reorganized it.

Keith didn’t want to meet Hunk’s face. “Slav. He rambled a lot, but if I pay attention to the syllabus I’ll be fine.”

“Cool,” Hunk was bounding with enthusiasm, “did you make any friends? Know anyone?”

“Uh… sort of?” Keith’s voice arched into a question. “Probably not.”

Hunk chuckled, “Yeah? What does that mean?”

Keith checked that Lance and Pidge were a safe distance away, still in line at Chicky Chow.

He hid from Hunk and mumbled.

“What? I didn’t hear you,” Hunk leaned closer. “Say it again.”

Keith’s voice was muffled behind his arm as he shoved his face into the crook of his elbow. “I sit nexmt to Shrmno.”

“One more time?” Hunk scooted closer still.

Keith groaned, jerked his head up and spat, “I sit next to Shiro!”

Keith feared Hunk's smile would start to shine down on him like a spotlight.

“That’s great!” Hunk bellowed. “Oh, man! You’ll get to spend quality time with him, and you could study together! This is perfect. Did you talk to him today?”

Keith ground the words out of his mouth. “Yeah. He was leaving Alfor at the same time. We walked together. We talked a little. There’s nothing to be excited about. He probably has a girlfriend.  And I turned him down, so I bet he thinks I hate him.”

“What do you mean, you turned him down?” Hunk's stare bore into him.

Ugh. He’d let that one slip right out. Keith folded his arms over his chest and hunched into his seat, “He asked if I wanted to eat with him. I said no.”

“Whoa!” Hunk’s face radiated, before it fell. “Why didn’t you go with him?”

Keith gestured to the table, “Because I already said I would be with you guys?”

Hunk frowned. “We would understand! Keith, you’re really into him—”

“—No, I’m not—”

“—and he wants to get to know you—”

“—No, he doesn’t—”

“—and we want you to be happy—”

“—You don’t know that we would get along, and—”

“Stop interrupting!” When Hunk was mad, he looked like someone put Angry Eyebrows on a teddy bear. This was one of those times. “And, you’re allowed to have friends outside of Lance and me.”

“I’m sort of friends with Pidge,” Keith said.

“You know what I mean,” Hunk squinted at him. “But thank you for thinking of us, even if it was just an excuse to get out of a date.”

“It wasn’t a date!”

“What wasn’t a date?”

Keith stitched his mouth shut as Lance and Pidge came from behind the table and passed out sandwiches, Lance’s question hanging in the air.

Everyone settled into their seats and unwrapped the paper casing their meals. An uncomfortable hush loitered around the table, and Pidge squirmed through the quiet once again.

“Anyway,” Pidge babbled, “I do agree that Crocosaurus could defeat the first Sharknado, but in the end, I think Crocosaurus would be the loser because as you can tell from the multiple Sharknado movies, there isn’t just _one_ Sharknado. Crocosaurus would have to defeat, at this point, five Sharknados before he could call it quits. Not that the sharks would actually hurt him, because as we’ve seen, even tanks can’t get through Crocosaurus, but I think he’d get bored. Crocoasaurus would go back to the swamp and keep eating people and raising crocosaurus babies. But, this is all pretending Crocosaurus lived through his movie and didn’t die in a fiery volcanic hell with Mega Shark.”

Lance exchanged suggestive looks with Hunk, their eyes darting back and forth between each other and Keith, who was doing his best to focus solely on his chicken sandwich and fries.

“What wasn’t a date?!” Lance repeated, his voice raising an octave and Hunk raking his hands through his hair.

“Oh my god,” Keith let his food drop onto the table in exasperation, and glared at Lance. “Our RA is in my biology class. He asked if I wanted to have lunch. I said no. It’s not a date, I don’t like him, and I’m going to need both you and Hunk to butt out of my nonexistent relationship with a guy who’s definitely straight, that I’m not attracted to, and haven’t been around for more than ten minutes.”

He picked up his sandwich and took another bite. A beat passed.

“You have the hots for Shiro?” Lance’s grin curled at the corners of his mouth, giving him the look of a Christmas elf on the naughty list. “Don’t get me wrong, I see it. He’s a very pretty man. And you probably won’t have to follow the dorm rules if you’re dating. Which might extend to our—,” he pointed between himself and Hunk, “—room, and Hunk could finally get that hot plate he’s been wanting. Right, babe?”

Hunk sighed to himself, his gaze distant and coated in glossy longing, “The Rosewill RHAI-13001 1800W Induction Cooker Cooktop. Someday, she’ll be mine.”

“Right,” Lance affirmed himself. “When can you start hooking up with him? Like, a week? Maybe two? The holidays are coming, and Hunk likes to make a lot of stews.”

Pidge spoke up, “I’m pretty sure I saw a rainbow flag pinned to Shiro’s lanyard.”

Keith’s attention snapped to her, “You did?”

The group stared back at him.

“I mean,” he stuffed a mouthful of his sandwich down his throat, “it’s always nice if the RA’s an ally. So they won’t discriminate.”

“R _iiiii_ ght,” Lance mocked, “and I was glad Hunk ‘wasn’t a homophobe’ when I found out _he_ was gay. In case you didn’t get that, I’m making fun of you, and myself. Hunk and I are in love, Keith.”

“I know. Thanks for the reminder.”

“I didn’t mind,” Hunk said, taking Lance’s hand from the seat opposite him.

“What class did you say you had with him?” Pidge asked.

“Bio 312K.”

Lance sniggered.

“What now?” Keith asked, steeling himself for the billionth dumb thing to burst out of Lance.

He was welling up with his own joke. “Bio 312K? You know what the K stands for?”

“Just spit it out.”

“K for Kissing! Mwuah-mwuah,” Lance twisted his lips into a fish mouth and made the loudest, wettest kissy noises he could. Hunk and Pidge struggled to hold in their giggles, a few they couldn’t catch with their hands slapped over their faces leaking out and shortening Keith’s temper.

“Alright, I’ve had enough,” Keith shoved his chair back from the table, the metal legs screeching over the tile floor, and grabbed his lunch and trash.

“Oh, c’mon, Keith,” Lance called after him. But, he was already marching away from the table and out of the union. Keith finished his food and slammed the rest of it into the garbage can beside the front door as he headed for Alfor Hall.

He passed the time between then and his next class with a nap that was graciously long and helpful in putting both Shiro and Lance behind him. The day finished with his second class, and he ate dinner with Hunk, Lance, Pidge, and a very noticeable eye on the cafeteria door. He rolled to sleep that night hoping his Tuesday/Thursday classes would promise time with Shiro too, if not in a scheduled hour and twenty-minute block, in casual passing.

It didn’t.

He went to his three classes, ate lunch, ate dinner, turned down video games in Hunk and Lance’s dorm to do homework, and kept himself up half the night with his heart pounding out of his chest. Wednesday morning meant Shiro. Shiro meant he would likely say something stupid again, and he was going to have to live with that. He had a semblance of a game plan, though — he had to check Shiro’s lanyard for anything remotely gay. But, he didn’t remember Shiro wearing a lanyard, and he remembered everything about Shiro’s neck and shoulders. And arms. And chest. And legs, which led to his ass.

Keith shook the last one out. Ass was not allowed. That was not a resident and advisor relationship, or athletic admiration, as he was passing off his interest in the rest of Shiro’s impeccable body. But maybe it could? The glutes needed to be toned after all, and—

No. That was dangerous territory.

Wednesday morning came with the blasting horn of Keith’s alarm, and he slumped to and from the communal bathroom with the same minimal attention to his surroundings. Once dressed and bouncing on the balls of his feet, an uncomfortable energy coursing through him, and his room key stuffed in his pants pocket, Keith steadied himself and made it to the dorm’s elevator.

He waited for the sound of someone following him, or leaving the floor’s wing. Keith loitered until he was sure he was about to be late, and heard the creak of the wing’s heavy metal door that meant someone was coming. He shoved the elevator button, and ripped his phone out of his pocket to appear at least a little busy. When he looked through the thick shade of his hair, he sighed dejectedly. Not Shiro.

Keith made it to class with a minute to spare and found the spot beside Shiro empty, strange for a full lecture hall that was nearing start time, and especially strange next to someone who looked like _that_.

“Hey,” Keith huffed, plopping into what he hoped was becoming his usual seat.

“Glad you made it,” Shiro teased.

“Would you believe the elevator was jammed?”

“No. I don’t have any panicked residents texting me when they should be calling maintenance,” he laughed.

“What about, all the bathroom stalls were full?”

“Again, haven’t gotten any calls about something out of my control, so, no.”

“Remind me to never take a job as an RA,” Keith grimaced. “It sounds like a nightmare.”

Shiro agreed, “It’s not always great, but someone has to be the team leader.”

Keith ripped another sheet of paper from his backpack and mentioned, “Yeah, but that doesn’t have to be you.”

Shiro shrugged. “It looks good on my resume, and I like helping people. It’s kind of like social worker training—I’m solving domestic disputes.”

“Isn’t that more like a cop?”

“Maybe,” Shiro put his pen to his lip. “Guess I’ll find out.”

Professor Slav barged into the room and slammed his briefcase onto the old wooden desk at the front.

“Okay!” he shouted, his accent ringing through the rows of students. “Today, we are talking about the components of a cell!”

“His beard looks bigger than before,” Keith whispered aside. Shiro muffled his laughter under the guise of a cough, and started writing on the back of his notes from the last class.

While Slav lectured, Keith scrawled down buzz words and copied the diagrams drawn on the chalkboard, but kept a close eye on the collar of Shiro’s white t-shirt. He noticed the edge of something black and lanyard-like, but it was tucked under his clothing and hard to discern. He needed a reason for Shiro to take his keys out. His mind first jumped to fire, or smoke from a student’s room, but Keith decided to reel it in. That was fucking crazy. And, not what someone with platonic admiration and interest in their very attractive advisor would jump to.

Keith devised a plan as the lesson dragged on, and put it into action when the clock above the door closed in on eleven fifty, the end of Professor Slav’s time. Everyone gathered their backpacks and marched down the steps, and Keith kept pace with Shiro. When the path split into two, one for Alfor and one for central campus that housed the dining hall and student union, Keith patted his pockets and feigned concern.

“Everything okay?” Shiro asked, noticing Keith had fallen behind.

“Ugh,” Keith groaned, “I left my meal card in my room, and I can’t find my keys. I think I locked myself out.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. The RAs have master keys. I can help you open it,” Shiro offered.

“Really? Thanks, man,” Keith smiled, and both headed for the dormitory. “Hope I’m not keeping you from anything.”

“Nothing urgent. Allura doesn’t mind waiting,” Shiro said.

Keith’s heart bottomed out of his chest and into his stomach, where his acid was eating it alive.

They climbed one of the campus’s hills. Keith choked out, “Allura?”

Shiro nodded, “You haven’t met her? She’s the teaching assistant for Professor Slav’s class. He didn’t remember to introduce her last time and she was on a job interview today, though, so I guess you wouldn’t. We’ve known each other since we were freshmen.”

This was fine. This was totally normal. Why would Keith mind hearing about his nonsexual role model’s love interest? Nothing was weird.

“Oh,” Keith squeaked. “Is she graduating this year, too?”

“Yeah,” Shiro smiled fondly. “She’s had a rough time in college, but I’m very proud of her.”

Keith was quiet, then. They walked side by side until the lobby of the dorm, when Keith let Shiro beat him to pushing the elevator’s call button.

“Are you okay?” Shiro asked. His face was doused with worry.

“What? Yeah, fine. Just hungry, and I can’t keep up with the Bio Master,” he tried to kid.

Shiro cocked half a smile, “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got two years of speed on you.”

“Oh, getting old,” Keith joked.

“At least I can legally enter a bar,” Shiro faced Keith as they stepped into the elevator and pushed for the third floor.

“Yeah, they can serve alcohol at your wake, Grandpa,” Keith scoffed.

Shiro winced, “Ooh, good burn. I’ll patch it up with an adult bandage. But, which do you use – Spiderman or My Little Pony?”

“I’ll take Andrew Garfield in spandex over ponies any day.”

Shiro swallowed down the wrong pipe, and went into a coughing fit.

“Woah, are you okay?” Keith asked, slapping Shiro’s back as he doubled over.

He stood up with a hand on his throat, “I’m fine. Didn’t see that one coming. You got me.”

The elevator opened on their floor. When they came to Keith’s door, he watched closely as Shiro lifted the lanyard from his t-shirt and pulled it over his head. He looked for a splash of color against the black fabric, anywhere, anywhere at all, but he couldn’t see as it dangled beneath the master key. Shiro made quick work of inserting it into Keith’s door knob, and popped it open proudly.

“There we go,” Shiro said, folding the lanyard in on itself. There! Right there!

Keith blurted, “Hey, what’s your button of?”

“Huh?” Shiro looked down, where Keith pointed at the strap. “Oh! It’s my pride button. Got it last year at the parade. Allura and I went together.”

“Cool,” Keith said, questions bubbling in his gut. “Did Allura get one too?”

“Yeah, they were handing ‘em out to everyone. It was crazy. Have you ever been to a pride parade?” Shiro rubbed his thumb over the plastic pin.

“No,” Keith admitted. “But I’ve wanted to go. We didn’t last year because it was during the fall semester and we didn’t have a ride. We’re bummed we weren’t here for any of the pride parades this year, either.”

“We?” Shiro wondered.

“Yeah, me, Hunk, and Lance. You met them at the RAs’ meeting last weekend, I think.”

“Right! Yeah, they were great guys.” Shiro’s eyes flitted over Keith’s face, as Keith’s did when Shiro broke away and leaned inside his bedroom.

“So, your meal card and keys?” Shiro asked, “Do you need any help finding them?”

“Oh, no, I’m okay. I just have to grab them and catch up to Hunk, Lance, and Pidge; they’re waiting for me,” Keith explained, and edged his way inside.

Shiro ducked out, “Alright! See you in class on Friday.”

“See you,” Keith waved goodbye and watched Shiro exit the wing, staring too long for a regular friendship. He felt that façade cracking inside him, though, splintering, like the fracture _Allura_ tore into his chest. Were they just friends? Were they dating? Were they engaged? Married already? Keith sank into his dirty carpet. His room keys and meal card stabbed into his leg from the pocket he shoved them in that morning, a perfect excuse and a perfect mess he’d created.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW - busted this out Sunday, uploading Monday!! this veers slightly from my original plot, but who actually sticks to their original ideas 100% of the time? pls tell me you dont. i need the reassurance. ALSO who do you think would win?? sharknado, or crocosaurus?? lemme know in those hot fresh comments ;}


	4. It Takes Two to Tango

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and Shiro spend some quality time together in preparation for their first biology test.

Friday, 9:45 AM. Keith pressed himself to the inside of his door with his eye glued to its peephole. He jumped at every _bang!_ of another resident leaving the wing, which was often in a hall of at least fifteen rooms. But, among the ten or so kids that passed his distorted view, none of them were -him-. An hour ahead of his last two mornings, Keith was feeling it in the deep rub of his undereye bags. Still, he waited, his feet digging into the toes of his shoes and the group chat vibrating at his side.

He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and split his attention between the onslaught of incoming messages and his hopefully incoming best pal, Shiro. He scanned the string of grey texts, and gleaned that Lance and Pidge were the majority of his notifications. They went back and forth with Hunk’s occasional guest appearance, and left a trailing conversation that was… _difficult_ to follow, to say the least. Topics changed so fast between the two, and the anxious nagging in Keith’s chest kept him from fully reading whatever was in the middle of Godzilla theories and old video game references. He muted his phone with a smooth flip into his hoodie, and leapt back to his view. The wing door slammed shut, and lurched Keith out after the mystery escapist with his backpack in one hand and his bedroom door barely locked by the other.

He slowed to an awkward shuffle as he rounded the corner to the elevator, “ _Please be him, please be him, please be him…_ ,” looping through his head.

He was in luck.

Shiro stood in white basketball shorts and a familiar tank top, “Suns Out / Guns Out,” printed in tattered font, with a hefty gym bag over his shoulder. When Keith came into view, Shiro first glanced away, but finished a double-take with Keith’s favorite smile: his.

“Hey, Keith,” Shiro nodded. Keith did back, adding a soft, “Hey.”

“You’re up early,” Shiro noted. “Where’re you headed?”

Keith shrugged and stumbled for an excuse. “Uh, just to the…library. Getting a head-start.”

“That’s great. When I was a sophomore, Allura had a hard time dragging me out of bed before noon,” he chuckled.

Keith winced internally. “Yeah, Hunk nags me about it all the time. You’re working out?”

Shiro looked down at himself, kicking one of his sneakers against the other, “Looks that way.” His eyes dashed to Keith’s as the elevator chimed, and they stepped inside together. They both took up the railing at the back, their hands lingering on the metal bar closer than Keith intentioned and leading a shiver down his spine and to his toes. They held a silence Keith couldn’t pin as comfortable or not in Shiro shifting his weight from leg to leg and his own inability to spit something out, anything that would cut the… tension? Did Shiro even think it was there, or was it all in his own head?

They opened to the lobby. Shiro dashed from the elevator with a quick, “See you in class!” over his back, while Keith released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

An hour of Keith wandering from end to end of campus later, and it was finally time. He shuffled into the classroom fifteen minutes prior to the opening of Slav’s lecture, and was relieved to see Shiro had already taken his seat in the middle row.

“How was the gym?” Keith asked, and plunked beside him.

Shiro wore a new t-shirt, dark blue with white ringers around the sleeves and collar. His damp hair stuck out in a few odd angles. He leaned back in his chair. “Pretty good, I think. Still have all my limbs.”

Keith snorted. Damn it. Again. “What’d you do?”

Shiro explained his work out, and the passion he kept for his exercise held Keith’s entire focus. It wasn’t until Slav banged a ruler against the front desk that he realized the room was full and it was eleven o’ clock, starting time. He dug out a ripped piece of paper and pencil, and tried to keep his stolen looks to a minimum while scribbling illegible notes.

And the routine was born. Keith woke up too early but with adrenaline gushing through him, caught Shiro on his ride down to the gym, went anywhere but the library for an hour, and pilfered glimpses of Shiro’s jaw, the strength of his eyes, and the straight bridge of his nose while passively following Slav’s lesson plan. Every period, Shiro had some story from the weight room, and they’d end up in a conversation somewhere else by the time class began. He clung to Shiro’s goodbyes when he endured Tuesdays and Thursdays, and hungered for conversation to tide him through the weekend on Fridays. He mentioned nothing to Hunk, Pidge, or Lance, but watched them trade smirks when he met them for food, or late-night Mario Kart rounds. Their first biology test approached with the dawn of the third week, and Keith hassled himself, nearly ready to ask Shiro if he'd study with him day by day. Though, he hadn’t planned for the night.

Keith wheezed in his sweaty sheet, his room pitch black and his heart rate soaring. His skin crawled in rounds against his bones while pins and needles prickled up and down his legs. A lingering fear stuck to his psyche like his boxers did his thighs, and startled him when a knock came from the other side of his door.

Keith opened it to Shiro, who was using his palm to wipe the exhaustion down his face and leaning his forearm against the wall.

“Hey,” Shiro said, his throat rumbling with gravel.

Keith pushed the hair pasted to his forehead out of the way. “What’s up?”

Shiro groaned, “The residents beside you just called with a noise complaint. They said they heard shouting, and it sounded like someone was dying. Are you dying?”

Keith’s throat closed, and he coughed out, “No.” He watched Shiro stand taller, and the suspicion span his face. His intimidatingly handsome face.

“Everything’s fine?” Shiro crossed his arms over his chest, and Keith finally noticed that Shiro was just as shirtless as he was, to say, completely.

Keith nodded curtly. “Fine.”

“This is your second complaint, Keith. What’s going on?” Shiro asked, his expression less stern than his voice.

“Nothing.” Keith recalibrated, closing himself for the first time in Shiro’s company. His eyebrows dipped, and his vision clouded until his eyes were unreadable. The faint smile that lingered around Shiro faded to his standard frown.

Shiro heightened his Resident Advisor Exterior in return. “I’m going to have to come in and check your room.”

Keith stood aside as Shiro entered, and turned on the overhead light. Shiro shut the door behind him, a move he hadn’t pulled in their first interaction. He looked over the space, more clothes tossed onto the floor this time and his sheets still a sad pile in the middle of the bed, though now, they were damp. Keith watched carefully as Shiro perched on the edge of his mattress.

As quickly as his RA armor appeared, it vanished. Shiro looked into him as deeply as he could in the short time they’d come to know each other, and was as tender as Keith saw him in class, as soft as he saw him before hitting the treadmill, and as warm as he saw him when Keith finished their in-class worksheets first, and he was genuinely proud of his friend. _Friend_ bit into Keith’s side, but he let it go for the moment. As kind as Shiro sat before him, Keith couldn’t afford to drop his guard.

“What’s going on?” he repeated. Keith was about to pull a nonchalant answer out of the air, but Shiro wasn't done. “The kids around you heard yelling. You don’t have a TV, a laptop, or video games, so it's not like you're playing Halo. And, there’s no one else in your room unless you stashed them in your closet, which I doubt.” He paused. “Let me help you, Keith.”

Keith sat beside Shiro on the bed, shoving his sheets into the farthest corner. “Like I said, nothing’s up. I’m fine. They probably heard the wind.” As Shiro pressed his lips into a taut line and thought, Keith watched his muscles ripple through his torso. It was objectively impressive, but was doing a lot more for Keith on a personal level.

Shiro supported himself with his hands on his knees. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me. But more than three complaints, and I’m obligated to add it to your resident file.”

“What does that mean?”

“Er…” Shiro scratched the back of his neck, leaving Keith with a whiff of his deodorant. Some kind of wood? “In reality, nothing. In the dorm, also nothing. You’ll be making me do paperwork, though.”

Keith bared the edges of his teeth in the slightest grin, “Anything but that.”

“Thanks,” Shiro bumped his side against Keith’s shoulder affectionately.

A beat passed.

“Have you started studying for the biology test?” Shiro asked.

Keith fell backwards into his mattress with a grunt. “Nope. You?”

Shiro shook his head, and his slept-in hair waved with him. “Not yet. I was thinking we'd study together, if that's okay.”

Keith’s heart stuttered, and he struggled to keep his mouth from doing the same. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

“Cool,” Shiro patted Keith’s knee, “how about my dorm, Saturday night, seven o’ clock? It’s the one at the other end of the hall.”

“I know,” Keith said. He fumbled in a panic of realization, “I mean, I’ve walked down and seen your name on the door. But, that’s fine with me. I’ll bring snacks.”

Shiro beamed, “Great. I’ll see you then.” He pushed himself off, and Keith sat up by his elbows. Shiro hovered a few extra seconds in the doorway, he and Keith looking between each other like it wasn’t two o’ clock on a Monday night, but the thick of a dream. Then, he was gone. Shiro flashed from being in the room to being replaced by an empty space and a closed door, and Keith dropped to the mattress with another groan.

He couldn’t help but groan throughout the rest of the week, too. Saturday wouldn’t come fast enough; Hunk and Lance were drilling him on date etiquette, although neither of them were qualified to give that kind of advice.

“You called me, crying, because you farted during your first kiss,” Keith glared at Lance in his and Hunk’s dorm. The soothing soundtrack of The Great British Baking Show jingled from the television beside him, Keith lounging in Lance’s wooden chair with his sneakers propped on the old, matching desk, and his Tuesday night homework procrastinated to Wednesday.

Hunk choked on his microwaved Taquito. “Dude, really?”

“It was a lot of pressure!” Lance’s cheeks glowed beet red. He stood from his spot on the carpet and spread over Hunk’s lap in the bottom bunk, who lifted his plate of food and settled it on Lance’s chest in their new position. “I thought you didn’t like me anymore.”

Hunk’s face skewed. “What? That’s dumb. I farted in Home Ec, like, our second class together.”

“Yeah, but that was different. That wasn’t a date.”

“Fair enough. Hey, shh. It’s the season finale.” They watched the sheep bounding through the meadow cutscene fade to Paul Hollywood’s thick facial hair.

Lance moaned, “If Kimberley doesn’t win, I’m not talking to either of you until Sunday.”

“Deal,” Keith agreed, a little too hopeful.

By the middle of the week, they’d roped Pidge into the discussion as well.

“I thought Lance wasn’t allowed to speak for two more days,” she frowned as he finished a particularly raunchy pun on the walk from the dining hall back to Alfor.

Lance explained, “I decided silence wasn’t the most effective form of protest.”

“That’s… not totally stupid, for once. It also means you can keep coaching Keith on his dating skills,” she bounced her glasses up and down her nose by toying with the temples of her frames.

Keith thrust his hands in his jeans pockets, “Thanks, but no thanks. It’s not even a date. He’s—”

“—straight, we know,” Hunk patted Keith’s shoulder. “But you still want to make friends, right? Dating is just… extra friendship.”

Lance guffawed. “Yeah, if by ‘extra’ you mean ‘extra sexy.’”

“Just be yourself,” Hunk sighed, “and everything will be fine.”

“Yeah. Besides, your date’s tomorrow night. We don’t have enough time to fix… all this,” Pidge gestured.

“You just pointed to all of me.”

“I know.”

“Whatever,” Keith’s temper flared. “I’m studying biology with him! It’s nothing. And, I’m this close to cancelling.”

Hunk teemed with disappointed outrage, “What?! No! Why?!”

They waited behind Keith as he yanked the dormitory’s front door open with all his force. “Because you guys won’t shut up.”

And they didn’t. Saturday morning, Keith woke up to a stream of anxious “Good luck!”s, GIFs, and Lance’s link to a YouTube video titled, “Send This To Your Crush.” It didn’t matter if he _did_ want to forward a clip of a child stating she was, “gonna eat your ass,” to Shiro and witness the aftermath, it was the principle of the thing. He muted the group message, their private messages, and anything that wasn’t his biology textbook. If he was going to meet Shiro, the Bio Master, for a ~~study date~~ —casual study meeting between buddies, he was going to know his shit.

When the clock struck six forty-five, Keith was pacing the brief length of his bedroom. So, taking two steps forward, turning, and taking two steps back. His quaking grip on the family-sized bag of potato chips he bought at the campus convenience store rattled, and made enough white noise to distract from the terms he’d memorized earlier in the day. Mitosis, meiosis, ATP. It was all in there somewhere, but the more he focused, the farther their definitions fell from grace.

Six fifty-five. He grabbed his textbook and notes, but paused before leaving.

He texted, “On my way to his room. Don’t be weird.”

Hunk and Pidge answered in an explosive show of support with, at minimum, fifteen replies, while Lance crammed in his nastiest sexual gifs that toed the border of pornography. While it was easy for Keith to respond like the three of them were the biggest drag in his life, he sensed a twinge of his anxiety easing in their encouragement.

He rapped his knuckles against the heavy wood.

His materials under one arm and the over-supply of snacks under the other, he waited in a moment he could place as his tensest three seconds yet. He glimpsed his reflection in the window at the end of the hall, adjacent to Shiro’s room – he looked as queasy as he felt. Then, the door creaked open.

“Hey!” Shiro welcomed him. He stood aside, wearing thick sweatpants and a hoodie with the school’s emblem stamped in the middle, and led Keith across the threshold. The overhead light was off, but the bedroom was illuminated by a standing lamp in each corner. The blinds to his window were fissured open, allowing the sunset to drift in but refrain from glaring in their eyes.

“Wow.” Keith wolf-whistled. The room was at least double the size of his own, and, while cramped, fit Shiro’s bed, a chest of drawers, and a desk while leaving open space in the center. It lacked an abundance of decorations, but Shiro’s customization shone through its cracks in a framed picture of him and a girl, dark skin, long white hair, and beautiful, on the corner of his desk, and blurry selfies of him in front of Big Ben tacked vertically beside his loft bed. In the cavern underneath the Ikea monstrosity, two beanbag chairs sat limply, one black and one red, with his open backpack and schoolwork sprawled out on the floor as the room’s sole mess.

Shiro plopped into the red beanbag before his supplies, and patted its partner in gesture. Keith lowered himself to the cushion, and fell in with an “oof.”

“How many chapters have you gone over?” Shiro asked, scooting notebooks and highlighters out from between them. He faced Keith with a glint in his eyes, like he already knew.

“Some,” Keith teetered from side to side, “but not a lot.” While being in Shiro’s room was overwhelming, the concept of _home_ invading in the scent of pine tangled with cinnamon, the comfort settling over his skin and unknotting the eternal, crippling twist in the pit of his stomach, and the not-so-terrible view of his friendly neighborhood…friend, he kept catching that picture just over Shiro’s shoulder. It was too much. He had to ask.

“Is that Allura?” his eyes beelined for the desk photo. He hadn’t met her yet. Shiro said it was because she sat at the very front, taking notes and writing the class’s tests, but he hadn’t pointed her out and Keith hadn’t asked. He clung to not knowing her face, and only thinking of her as a concept. If she was a person with a body, thoughts, feelings… her existence was too much like confirmation.

Shiro turned to meet Keith’s gaze, and said, “Yeah, we were orientation leaders last year. That’s from training week.”

“Cool.” Keith cleared his throat and shuffled in his seat. Maybe the room’s atmosphere couldn’t completely absolve the knives rooted in his gut. He needed a distraction. He nodded towards the Big Ben pictures. “And that's from your study abroad, right?”

Shiro smiled. “You remember that? I mentioned it in passing maybe, once.”

Keith coughed with more gusto. “Um, yeah, I’m…also interested in…travelling.” What the hell was he saying? “Anyway, the, uh, the chapters.” He dragged his biology textbook into his lap. Shiro didn’t need to realize he fondly remembered every small thing he’d ever said and Keith replayed them each night before he wrestled himself to sleep.

“Right,” Shiro took out his biology notes, and they got cracking. It was an hour before they opened Keith’s bag of chips, and another hour before the moon had risen and the room was only lit by the gentle yellow lights standing guard in the four corners. Keith fluctuated from genuinely learning to staring into the studious depths of Shiro’s eyes, and with Shiro focused on teaching Keith any and all scientific vocabulary he could, it gave him plenty of space to openly gawk. At some point, Keith kicked off his shoes and Shiro removed his hoodie to unveil yet another black t-shirt spread tightly across his chest.

“Okay, how many of those do you own?” Keith asked, upside down in the beanbag and his hair caressing the carpet.

Shiro looked down at himself. “What?”

“I’ve seen you wear that shirt at least ten times.”

“I like black,” he shrugged. “What are chromosomal mutations?”

“Mutations that are chromosomal.”

“Keith.”

“Shiro. I’m not wrong.”

“Okay,” Shiro hoisted himself out of the beanbag in one move, something Keith would have to relay to his friends later in complete awe, “maybe we should take a break.”

Keith yawned. “You said Allura writes the tests?”

Shiro pulled his left arm across his chest, stretching it with his right, and then switched. “Yeah, but not totally. Slav likes to put her in charge, and then rewrite all her work.”

“You know, this would go a lot faster if Allura sent you the answers.”

“As your resident adviser and a person with integrity, I’m going to say no.”

“Pretend you’re not those things for five minutes,” Keith suggested.

Shiro barked a laugh, “How about, I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”

They made fleeting eye contact. Twice. Keith couldn’t call it coincidental when he’d been caught up in Shiro all night anyway, but the second glance left something between them, something with intent. Keith focused on the ceiling. There were fewer cracks in Shiro’s than his.

It was Shiro’s turn to cough. “Maybe if we sit somewhere else, we’ll focus again. We’ve been in one place for too long.”

Keith asked, “Where do you want to go?”

Shiro put one hand on the loft bed’s ladder. “Up?”

His heart felt like it had taken ten double shots of espresso, but was sinking through molasses.

Keith jerked out of the beanbag with as little hassle as he could. He stood in front of Shiro, and found himself faced with their height difference for the first time. Had Shiro grown in the last two hours? He swore he used to be at least at eye level, not below the square end of Shiro’s jaw. “Will we break it?”

Shiro shook his head. “It’s held plenty before. Allura and I used to study up here all the time. I don’t think you weigh much more than her.”

“Oh,” Keith gulped down the cringe in his throat, “yeah, sure. Whatever works.”

“After you.”

Shiro moved from the ladder, and allowed Keith to scramble onto the far end of the bed. Shiro tossed their notes up, and climbed in after him. The ceiling was a foot above them, and the already-low lighting had nearly disappeared.

“Comfy,” Keith said, his voice low and his breathing rapid.

“Yeah,” Shiro agreed. “It’s nice when you need some quiet.”

Keith leaned his back against the wall, sitting cross legged and refusing to look in Shiro’s direction. “Do you need quiet often?”

“Mm. I’d say so. Life’s pretty busy right now, and sitting here, in the dark—I don’t know, it just takes some of the stress out.” Shiro pointed to a spot over Keith’s head. “I put up glow stars when I moved in over the summer. They’re not too bright, and they help.” Keith’s eyes wandered from the plastic stars to Shiro’s expression, briefly and in the flicker Shiro was distracted by his own handiwork. Shiro was blushing, Keith noticed, or hoped so under the cover of semi-darkness.

“How?” Keith asked. He was hesitant, and the question nearly caught in his throat, but if he was going to stretch the boundaries of their class-based, surface level friendship, he’d have to try.

Shiro eased into his answer. “They’re sort of a reminder. I mean, our galaxy alone is so massive, and to think beyond that is a whole universe in which we’re insignificant…it puts things in perspective. Like, the stars, planets and moons don’t care what we make on this biology test. We do, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s irrelevant.”

Keith nodded. He caught sight of Allura’s frame in the edge of his vision. “That’s pretty cool. Like, the universe doesn’t care, so we shouldn’t either.”

Shiro chuckled. “We still have to study, though.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Keith grinned. “I’m saying—I mean, I—I don’t know what I’m saying. I guess just that that makes sense. And, you’re right. It helps.”

“I’m glad,” Shiro said. A calm space lived between them, until Shiro reached for his notebook again and flipped to their last page. “So, let’s try this again. What are chromosomal mutations?”

Keith sat up straighter and pressed against his temples. “It’s… the, uh… They delete, disrupt, and duplicate many loci at once.”

“Almost, you forgot ‘rearrange.’”

“Alright, professor, let’s not get too serious here.”

They went like this for another hour, the time slipping between their fingers and notecards without notice. Their phones vibrated back on Earth, Shiro’s bedroom floor, but neither of them paid the noise much mind while playing definition racquetball. Over the steady learning curve, they settled into the bed’s warmth and huddled closer. Keith felt like jumping out of his skin every time Shiro shifted his posture, brushing his bare arm against a new patch of Keith’s. Keith considered it some kind of unusual punishment enacted by a vengeful god, but he didn’t believe in deities and this was too good to be true.  

As they closed in on eleven o’ clock, Keith was face down in Shiro’s pillow while Shiro lay on his back beside him and flipped through study materials. His body twitched, while muffled sounds growled through the pillow. Shiro gave him a nudge, but Keith didn’t quiet. Shiro poked him harder. His head snapped to attention, and Keith gasped. His face was flushed. The squeeze of dread clutched his vocal cords, and his muscles were rigid.

“You okay?” Shiro eyed him, worry creasing his face.

“Yeah,” Keith rolled over and sat up beside him, “I fell asleep for a second. It’s fine.”

“You’ve said that before,” Shiro mentioned.

“Uh-huh.” Keith pushed his hair out of his face. He fought to fixate on the present, and ease the lingering anxiety he hoarded. If his heart was racing when Shiro moved them to the bed, it was speeding around a Nascar track at the thought of Shiro cracking his secret.

“How many more do we have?” Keith asked.

Shiro held up the stack of cards and yawned, “Something like twenty.”

Keith groaned through his body's residual shaking. “It’s time to beg Allura.”

“My dad always told me, ‘there’s nothing hard work can’t achieve.’” Shiro smiled to himself. “We’re almost done.”

“Do you want to know what my dad used to say?” Keith stretched onto his left side, facing Shiro and propping his head up.

“What?”

“’Get me another beer and maybe I’ll feed you.’” Keith bit his tongue. Shit. What was he saying? Shit. Shit. Shit.

“God, Keith. I’m sorry.”

Keith flinched. He watched Shiro take him in, and waited with bated breath for the signature look, pity. But, it never came. Shiro was something else. Was he…supportive? Keith couldn’t tell. No one had looked at him like that, yet. His foster parents always had wide, weepy eyes, and the soulful smiles that wanted to care for him. They were never the problem. He was.

“Don’t be. I learned how to use a bottle opener, and I don’t have the decency to keep from asking you to text your girlfriend for answers,” Keith cracked his joke dryly. His sense of humor seemed lost in the trauma, though, because Shiro was suddenly upset.

“You think Allura and I are dating?” he asked, his eyes wild and voice stumbling.

“Uh, yeah? Aren’t you?” Keith hoped he was masking his relief.

Shiro spoke like a baby deer learning to walk, “No! I mean, we did, once, for like two weeks of freshman year. We both thought we were straight, I mean, back then. Allura’s got a girlfriend. They’ve been dating for almost a year. And I’m gay, dude. Like, absolutely, definitely, very gay. How didn’t you get that? I told you about Pride!”

Keith defended himself. “You said you and Allura went together! I thought you meant _together together,_ like couples do!”

“No! I’m so gay.” Shiro put his face in his palm. “I mean, I can’t blame you. Straight people really can’t tell.”

Keith raised his voice, “What do you mean, ‘straight people?!’ I’m as gay as you!”

Shiro snapped up at his waist. He looked down at Keith with his mouth perpetually open in shock. “What are you talking about?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “You mean you didn’t know _I_ was gay? I told you when you first knocked on my door, girls wouldn’t be a problem for me. I made that stupid fucking Spider-Man joke! I told _you_ about Pride!”

Shiro spluttered, “I thought you were going to support Hunk and Lance!”

“No, I’m gay!”

“Well, so am I!”

“Great!”

“Wonderful!”

They looked at each other, both out of breath. Then, they started giggling. It devolved into laughter, and then, mad cackling.

“Oh my god,” Shiro choked out. “This whole time, I thought you had a thing for Pidge.”

“That’s insane,” Keith howled, “You and Allura are practically dating! I was right on target!”

“You were off by a couple hundred miles,” Shiro laid back down and tossed to face Keith, reclining on his right side.

They slowed, until another bout of quiet settled in their little top bunk bubble. Optimism nudged into Keith’s chest, and he felt he could hope the same did for Shiro, now that he actually had a chance. A small, sliver of a chance that Shiro would like him back and find him worthy of his time, but nonetheless a chance.

“Do you want to finish studying?” Shiro asked, gnawing on his lower lip.

Keith focused on the pattern of the checkered duvet beneath them, diverting from his overwhelming urge to bite into Shiro’s mouth himself. “Not if you don’t.”

“I don’t.”

“Me neither.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eyyyyy!!! this is my longest chapter yet, but it probably wont be by the end haha. thanks for reading this far and giving me kudos!! i really appreciate it! ofc comments are welcome too ;3c


	5. Actions Speak Louder Than Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With everyone out and proud, it should be smooth sailing from here, right?

_“I mean, our galaxy alone is so massive, and to think beyond that is a whole universe in which we’re insignificant…it puts things in perspective.”_

Keith circled Shiro’s words through his head in laps, lying flat on his back underneath the webbed cracks in his ceiling and the pressure weighing on his chest. Twelve thirty in the morning. He could taunt himself with memories of Shiro inches from his lips in the shady privacy of Shiro's top bunk, the way Shiro ran his fingers through the sides of his hair during the test (obviously stealing Keith’s attention and fucking up his grade, regardless of how much they studied, by the way), or he could let his childhood find him like it did every night, and his dad would beat down his bedroom door with a beer and his mother’s last note in hand. Each was a specific form of torture that left him hopelessly empty inside. Keith shoved onto his stomach and buried himself in his pillow. With his fists balled and shoulders rigid, he read the warning signs that it was about to be a very long Friday night.

His phone buzzed on the corner of his desk. Lance.

A message to the group chat between him, Hunk, and Pidge.

“Hey – I’ve got a guy who knows a guy who knows a bar that’s got super chill security. I’m making Hunk take me. Do you want to be the DD, Keith?”

Keith sighed.

“Is this my ninth or tenth time as your designated driver?” He tapped back.

He felt Lance roll his eyes through the text bubble. “This would make it the fourth, dumbass. It’s not like you want to drink anyway. Pleeeeeeease???”

Pidge interrupted. “Could you guys handle your marital spat in private? Trying to sleep.”

“No,” Lance replied with a winky emoji.

Keith’s thumbs idled over the keys. Lance was right; he never wanted to participate in the first place, so he was obviously available. But, there, alone, in the dark, a hole in his chest leeching the life out of him through his pathetic crush and his disappearing parents? Maybe his dad had the right idea after all. It was the last item on the list of things to try taking the terrors away, aside from therapy. And, he had Hunk and Lance. Well, Lance tended to lose sight of his surroundings after his fifth shot. He had Hunk, which was better than his dad with only a son to fuck up.

The universe didn’t care what he did, anyway.

He sent his text with a quiver in his fingers. “No. I’m drinking this time. Hunk can do it.”

Lance spammed a series of celebratory GIFs, and they decided to meet in Alfor’s parking lot in fifteen minutes.

As he was on his way down, he locked eyes with Shiro’s door at the other end of the hall. Maybe this was a bad idea. Shiro probably, definitely didn’t believe in underage drinking. But, Shiro wasn’t his boyfriend, and Keith didn’t need another person to disappoint outside of himself.

They piled into Hunk’s dented tin can of a minivan, Keith using his whole body to shove the sliding door aside and allow him into the backseat. Lance put the bar’s address into his phone's GPS, and held it for Hunk as they pulled off campus and into town.

“So, Keith, what’s up?” Hunk asked. Their eyes flickered to each other’s in the overhead mirror. “You in a bad mood? I thought Shiro was gay. That’s good, right?”

Keith shrugged. “Sure. I don’t care.”

Lance scrambled to face Keith behind him, “What?! Of course you care! You like him! He likes boys! The possibilities are endless! Ask him out, you idiot.”

“Why would I ask him out? He’s just my study partner.”

Lance let out a noise derivative of a motorcycle revving. “I thought you got over this. We know you’re into him! You know you’re into him! There’s no way you’re that stubborn.”

“How stubborn?”

“So stubborn that you’ll lose someone you like just because you can’t admit it! God, I can’t wait until you’re drunk. You’ll be a lot easier to deal with.”

“Even when I’m drunk, I won’t be into him. Because I’m not.”

“You’re a fucking liar!”

“Lance,” Hunk boomed, “which turn do I take here?”

Lance grumbled under his breath as he turned back into his seat. The remainder of the fifteen-minute ride was silence aside from Lance’s phone speaking directions, and the buzzing in his head as Keith contemplated whether this was truly a terrible idea, or not. Maybe he’d feel better after he spewed his feelings all over the bar and couldn’t restrain himself. Maybe he’d feel like a complete moron and vow to never consume alcohol again. Neither of those were bad outcomes. This was fine. He’d feel better either way. It didn’t matter.

He was jittery as they stood behind the counter. The lights were dimmed to near pitch darkness, excluding the flashing red beam that spun from wall to wall in figure eights. They nearly lost each other in the crowd of older college kids, Keith assuming most of them graduate students, but they blended right in with their school hoodies on. No one checked their driver’s licenses at the door, and Lance came away with six shots of the cheapest vodka empty pockets could buy. They took up a table near the back, facing the dance floor but on a higher platform. The music thrummed throughout the place, but in the isolated corners it was low enough that they only had to shout, not scream.

Hunk sat between them with one arm resting on the back of Lance’s chair as Lance split the shots, passing three to Keith and hoarding three for himself.

Keith held the little glass in his hand, and steeled himself to dunk it down his throat, past his taste buds.

“On the count of three!” Lance’s cackle was wide, toothy, and mischievous in the swirling red light. “One, two, three!” They threw their heads back and swallowed the gulp of drink, Keith’s eyes stinging against the burn. Once they finished their first three, Lance wandered to and from the bar, returning with six more shots. Now six deep each in a span of five or ten minutes, Keith hoped he’d feel whole by the time they got home.

Half an hour of talking later, and words were leaking out of Keith’s mouth like an open faucet.

Hunk was watching Lance find his groove in the center of the room, the bar alternating between the red lightshow and a bright white, but left Keith an ear and the game plan he and Lance devised before leaving their dorm. Keith had never been interested in drinking before, and this was their chance to get some answers, possibly their only chance. Step one was, of course, to get him drunk. This was easy enough, considering Keith had no tolerance.  Step two was to get him talking about Shiro, and hear him say he liked him. (“All I want is for him to admit it once! God,” Lance lamented as he shoved his sneakers on, Hunk laughing at him while they rallied to meet Keith in the parking lot.) Step three was to see what happened after that. Lance and Hunk had been debating what kind of drunk Keith would be since the summer before freshman year, and they had a twenty-dollar bet riding on it.

“You’re a good friend, dude, you’re a really good friend,” Keith leaned on Hunk’s side and spoke like his words stuck to each other as they left his mouth.

Hunk chuckled, “Thanks. Am I your best friend?”

Keith nodded sloppily, “Yeah, dude. You’re my best friend, you’re so good at being my—being my friend. You, and Lance, and Lance and Pidge, you’re all really good. You’re really, really good.”

“Wow, thanks buddy. Why don’t you tell us that when you’re sober?”

“I’m sober. I’m really not that drunk. I don’t think vodka’s that strong. I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. Shiro thinks I say ‘I’m fine’ a lot. It’s because I’m fine.”

“What else does Shiro think?” Hunk watched the usual crease between Keith’s eyebrows fade, and a softer smile replace the hard line of his mouth.

“Shiro thinks the universe has bigger problems. He’s right! It does. That’s cool. Shiro is gay, you know, so that’s cool, too.”

“Yeah? Why do you care if Shiro’s gay?” Hunk teetered on the edge of discovery.

“I told you, I don’t care if he’s gay. What, you think I’m homophobic? Hunk. _I’m_ gay. I just think he looks good, he’s really nice, he cares about people. I don’t think he cares about me, but that’s…fine. It’s fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, it’s okay, because we’re _friends_.” Keith spat the last word with a bitter taste.

“What, you don’t want to be friends?” Hunk watched Lance shimmy his shirt up to his ribs and back down, rolling his body around the dance floor. He smiled to himself, with one eye on each of his drunk babies.

“No, I want to be his friend. But like,” Keith slouched over the table and laid his head in the crook of his arm, “I want to be his really, really good friend. And I want to hang out with him in the dark more, like, a lot. But don’t tell him I said so. He doesn’t like me that way, not like, a really good friend.”

“Why do you say that?”

Keith guffawed. “He won’t talk to me like he did before. I ruined everything, probably because I’m bad at science. And I talked about my dad. But shhh. Don’t say that I talked about my dad. I hate talking about my dad. I hate it. Let’s talk about something else, dude. I don’t want to talk about my dad.”

“Okay,” Hunk said. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Ugh, I don’t know. What do you want to talk about?”

“Tell me some more about Shiro,” Hunk nudged him.

“Yeah, okay. I don’t want to talk about Shiro. But I like him. He’s my friend, my big, big friend. He’s really cool, and strong, and he’s got those big muscles, you know? Like, he could probably carry me around Garrison like, three times.”

“That’s cool. He works out a lot, huh?”

Keith bobbed his head from side to side, and a goofy happiness took over his face. “Yeah, he’s so strong. I want to eat his arms. Like, they look so fucking good, Hunk. But, Hunk, can I—Hunk are you listening? Can I tell you a secret?”

Hunk leaned in. “Sure.”

“You have to promise not to tell anyone, especially not Lance.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“No, fuck you, promise.”

“Dude, fine. I promise.”

“Okay.” Keith inched towards Hunk and shouted much too close to his ear for comfort, “I think I want to be more than Shiro’s best friend. Like, I think, I want to be his boyfriend. You know what I mean?” He started laughing, which roughly morphed into a snort.

“Yeah, I do,” Hunk backed off. Step two complete.

Keith dragged himself up by the table in an attempt to sit upright, but flopped against the counter. His cheeks burned a fiery pink, and his half-open mouth dangled. “I just…I think he’s really fucking cute. Like, picture him, right now. He’s so cute. He’s more than that, Hunk. Shiro’s hot as hell. Like, fuck, Hunk. Listen to me. I’m telling you secrets, right now. He’s so fucking hot. Hunk, I want to kiss him, all the time. I almost—almost kiss him every time I sit next to him in biology which is every day in the morning and I think—I thought he might want to kiss me too but he doesn’t, Hunk.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re right, I fucking don’t,” Keith groaned. “It’s driving me insane, Hunk. I don’t know if he fucking likes me, and I fucking like him so fucking much. This is stupid. I’m being so stupid.”

“No, dude. You’re not stupid. Crushes suck,” Hunk comforted. “Wow, you’re really chatty. I’ve never heard you say this much at once.”

Keith flippantly gestured his hand. “I always have a lot to say, but I have fucking anxiety, Hunk. Maybe I should be kinda drunk all the time, so I can talk.”

“I think that’s alcoholism.”

“Fuck, yeah, you’re right. Then I gotta start talking now, while I’m not super, super drunk. Just a little,” Keith said, though it dissolved into mumbles.

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, and spent a few minutes opening Shiro’s contact page through the blur coating his vision. “Hunk, I’m going to the bathroom,” he yelled as he stood.

“Okay,” Hunk said, “be careful.”

“Sure, big guy,” Keith saluted, and stumbled to the men’s restroom. Luckily, their back table was situated nearby and didn’t require the use of any stairs. He burst into the bright light of the stalls, and winced as his eyes adjusted. Keith locked himself in the large, handicap stall at the end of the aisle, and jammed his finger on the “Call” button under Shiro’s name. The longer the phone rang, the more flustered Keith became, and the more he felt like overflowing.

“Your call has been forwarded to an automated voicemail system,” the robot voice on the other end greeted. Keith kicked at the base of the toilet, slipped, and spilled onto the grimy tile.

The phone beeped. It was time.

“Hey, Shiro,” Keith began from the floor, his tongue in the way of his words and slipping them together. “I know you’re a busy guy. But, like, I thought we had fun when we were studying. I had fun. You didn’t, I guess, because you don’t want to talk anymore. But I really, really, really, really like you, and I really, really, really want to hang out with you again. Like what we did in your room. Maybe more. And I think you look really good. Like, you should see a doctor, because you’re smokin’. Okay, I’ll let you go now. Bye, love you. Oh, this is Keith, by the way. Bye. Bye-bye. Goodbye.”

When the call ended, Keith caught sight of the time. One forty-five in the morning. Shit, of course. Shiro was asleep, duh. What a stupid thing to do. Now he had to go find Hunk again, and who knows if he could make it back by himself. Maybe if he just stayed in the bathroom, Hunk would come get him. He was really tired, too…a nap wouldn’t be so bad.

He propped his head against the graffitied bathroom wall, and let the world fade to black, just for a minute.

He heard wild, high-pitched laughter when he came to, and it was unfortunately recognizable.

“Hunky-bear,” Lance hissed, probably thinking he was whispering. “I love you so much. Like, you don’t even know how much I love you. We’re such a good couple, and I want to kiss you, please, please, please.”

“Lance!” Hunk yelped, though it ended in a giggle. “We have to find,” he was interrupted by a low moan, and made his own in return. When it was over, Hunk gasped. “Keith,” he finished.

“I’m in here,” Keith yelled, “please stop making out.”

He staggered to his feet, and coerced the stall lock open. Lance had Hunk pinned to the wall of hand driers and was plastered against his body.

“Are we leaving?” Keith asked.

“Yeah,” Hunk took Lance and Keith in each of his hands. “It’s almost two fifteen; they just announced last call.”

Lance wrapped himself around Hunk’s arm, and they followed him outside into the back of his minivan.

“Why can’t I sit in the front?” Lance whined.

“Because you’ll make me crash,” Hunk shushed him with a kiss on the forehead.

When Keith realized what was happening, he was inside Alfor’s lobby and Hunk was herding him into the elevator.

“I can take the stairs,” Keith insisted, but wasn’t strong enough to resist Hunk’s muscles in a sober state, much less his drunken wobble.

When they appeared on the third floor, Hunk unlocked Keith’s door for him and shuffled him and Lance inside. Keith was tucked into his sheets, still in his clothes, with a trash can beside his bed and his phone in his hand as Hunk turned the lights off to lead Lance upstairs. “Call me if you need anything,” he whispered through the crack in the door.

“I need you right now, my sexy, beautiful—” Lance was cut off by Hunk’s ashamed slam of Keith’s bedroom door.

Keith attempted to hold his phone over his face, but after the third time it fumbled out of his hands and the glass smacked into his nose, he resorted to rolling over and texting on his side.

He opened a new message with Shiro, fresh and blank. Sober, it would’ve taken him minimum fifteen minutes to craft the perfect text. But, in his only slightly tipsy state, thinking didn’t occur to him. He slammed buttons and feelings into those bright blue windows he couldn’t take the time to regret. Half way through a paragraph, Keith accidentally hit the send button. Half way through finishing that paragraph, his eyelids fluttered shut, and his breathing slowed to a steady sleep.

When Keith woke up the next morning (afternoon?), the light of day burned bullet holes in his eyelids. His mouth felt like he’d consumed buckets of sand the night before, and tasted like centuries of dust settled in afterwards. A headache thudded against his forehead, begged to break out, and wouldn’t stop rattling around his skull. But, it also sounded external, like someone was hitting him with a baseball bat. Through a wall. Oh, shit. That was real life.

“One second!”

Keith slumped to the door and swung it open, his t-shirt and jeans twisted around his body, and his hair a ragged mess like he spent his wild Friday night with a leafblower. His eyes adjusted to the hallway’s lighting, and the silhouette that blocked it.

“Hey,” Shiro said.

“Mm, hey. Sorry about that,” Keith groaned. He didn’t bother shutting the door, and slunk back into bed. “What time ‘s it?”

“Ten thirty,” Shiro answered. “I got your messages.”

“My what?” Keith asked through a jaw full of pillow.

“Your messages. I texted you back, but I figured you’d be…well, like this.” Shiro sat on the corner of his bed.

“I don’t remember what I said.”

“That’s okay. But, you did ask if I wanted to get coffee today. And I do.”

“Oh,” Keith twisted himself around his mattress until his head was beside Shiro’s thigh. He rubbed at the exhaustion in his cheeks. “Can you give me ten minutes?”

“Sure,” Shiro said. When Keith finished digging his knuckles into his eyes, he saw stars, but they danced around Shiro’s head like a crown. He was looking down at him, and staring back into Shiro’s eyes was like some kind of nightmarish fever dream. He’d thought about this moment, Shiro looking into him from above like that, so many times, but it almost always fed into something…more explicit. He coughed, and wriggled his way to the floor with no contact between their two bodies.

“I’ll be right back if you want to wait here,” Keith offered, his throat full of broken glass and his voice reflecting it. He lunged into the communal bathroom with a change of clothes, including underwear he waited to snatch when Shiro wasn’t looking, and his shower caddy. He only got his leg stuck in the pantleg once, which was a record for him when in a hurry. It didn’t help that he overcorrected the scent of alcohol and piss-drenched bar floors with an obscene layer of cologne, but the deodorant hopefully took out some of the offense. Once on the walk of shame to his bedroom, he realized he left his brush behind and looked like he was raised by raccoons from the neck up. It was still in his bedroom. His bedroom, in which Shiro waited for him. God.

He ”ahem”’d as he entered. Under his mountain of frizzy black hair, he saw Shiro’s painful attempt to hide his shock.

“Are you…ready to go?” Shiro asked. He darted between Keith’s face and the mess hanging above it.

Keith was riddled with sarcasm, “Yeah. I want to leave. Like this.”

Shiro nodded solemnly. “Alright. Do you, uh, want a hat?”

“Oh my god, I’m not serious!” Keith smacked Shiro in his arm, and the light returned to his eyes. He cracked a grin with a breath of relief.

“Phew,” Shiro panted, his laughter contagious and spreading to Keith as he ran his brush through his matted bird’s nest.

“Okay, I get it, I’m a mess. Let’s go,” Keith shuffled Shiro out the door, and snatched his keys after him.

They strolled to the campus coffee shop near the union. It sat beside the building’s ground floor doors, and kept baskets of flowers strung around its roof gutter from spring through the fall. Three or four tables cluttered beneath them and the awning’s shade, but the greeting bell chimed as Shiro swung the glass door open and they chose to sit indoors. The décor varied between tones of beige and black while the thick coffee aroma sunk into every pore. Keith and Shiro stood before the blackboard menu and the barista took their orders, one venti caramel frappucino for Shiro, and a tall black coffee for Keith.

As Keith scrounged his credit card out of his back pocket, Shiro was already paying for both.

“Hey, thanks, but you don’t have to do that,” Keith interjected.

“Think of it as a thank you for working with me last weekend,” Shiro swiped in and out of the cash register, and took his receipt. They hung around the end of the counter in wait for Shiro’s venti, while Keith took his drink to the straws and sugar. He dumped four packets in before Shiro raised an eyebrow, and another two before Shiro spoke up.

“What’s the point of black coffee if you’re going to ruin it like that?” he asked.

Keith shrugged, “I like the taste this way. And you’re not allowed to say anything when you’ve got that landfill of calories coming.”

“Hey,” Shiro squinted. “It’s not that bad. It’s mostly ice, anyway.”

Keith scoffed. “If ice was made of cream and syrup.”

“Why don’t you get us some seats, and I’ll worry about my health.” Shiro brushed him off with feigned annoyance. As Keith took up a table near the front door, he smiled to himself. His chair was close enough that the breeze seeped in through the old windows, gusted beside him every time the door chimed open, and the brief rushes of cold eased his headache.

Shiro sat across from him with his whipped cream-adorned monstrosity, and slurped at it through a straw Keith swore was a foot long.

Keith coughed, trying to ease the roughness still caught in his windpipe from the night before, and asked, “You said I left you messages? Um…what kind of messages?”

Shiro shook his head, shifting to glance out the window. “They weren’t important. Just butt-dials. Nothing too embarrassing, except you sounded like you downed an entire keg.”

“Yikes,” Keith cringed. “Was that it?”

“There were…a _few_ texts.”

“God. How many?”

“I had thirty-three notifications when I woke up this morning, and thirty of them were from you.”

“Oh.” Keith’s cheeks flushed. “Sorry.”

“No big deal. It got us together outside of Slav’s class, anyway,” Shiro grinned.

Keith sipped his drink, avoiding Shiro and focusing on his hands, instead. “About that – did I say why I wanted to hang out today?”

“A little. You said something like we hadn’t talked much this week, and we should fix that.”

Keith felt his stomach drop, and the blood rush to his head. He scrunched his face into a knot almost as uncomfortable as his mangled heart. “Wow. I must’ve been pretty smooth to convince you.”

“No, you weren’t.” Keith heard the mocking joy in Shiro’s voice as he stared into the depths of his coffee. “But, I _was_ quiet this week. And it wasn’t about you, or something you said Saturday night. I had a lot on my plate, but I think I’m okay now. You were right, though.”

“In my texts? About what?” Keith asked, soft and peeking through his frazzled bangs.

“We did make a pretty good team.”

Keith met Shiro, then, and shared his half-smile.

“I was thinking we could do it again sometime,” Shiro offered.

“Yeah. That sounds fine.”

“You want to come over next Friday and start the homework? There won’t be booze, because I’m the RA, you’re underage, and you’re pretty funny drunk. I don’t think we’d get anything done.”

Keith scoffed. “Yeah, like you’re any better. I bet Allura has quality content of you, wasted.”

“Good luck getting it from her. I swore if she ever posted those videos, I’d tell her girlfriend she doesn’t actually like her cooking.”

“So, there are videos.”

“What?”

“There are videos to post,” Keith waggled combative eyebrows. “I’ll have to get you hammered someday.”

Shiro chuckled and dodged the topic, but didn't drop the conversation. They kept on and on about, well, everything, until the clock struck one in the afternoon.

-

“You think vanilla is the best flavor? Are you kidding me?” Keith crossed his arms over his chest.

Shiro propped his elbows on the table in defense. “It goes with anything. It’s universally liked.”

-

Shiro bit his lip, chewing as he thought. “If I had to choose…I’d rather have a cat. Not that I don’t like dogs—”

“Don’t worry. This is a canine-free zone. They’re like toddlers with fur,” Keith discreetly tilted his head towards the woman ordering behind them, standing at the counter with her lapdog yipping in its purse-style carrier. Shiro muffled his laughter.

“I still love dogs. But, I don’t know, you feel like you’ve earned it when a cat trusts you. They’re calm. They want to be comfortable, and safe. It's nice.”

-

“An active volcano.”

“What? Are you insane? Do you have a death wish?”

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

“That’s – what are you – you can’t live by an active volcano. That’s not how the game works.”

Keith leaned back in his chair. “You asked if I could live anywhere in the world. That’s my answer. Where would you go, Mr. Sensible?”

“Hm. I don’t have a place. I think I’d travel cross-country, and after that, hit the globe. There’s too much to see.”

Keith’s phone buzzed against his leg. He checked it under the table, and found Hunk had messaged him five times wondering if he was alive and why he wouldn’t open his bedroom door.

“Sorry, didn’t choke on my own vomit. With Shiro,” he wrote back.

“Well,” Shiro said, despite Keith’s fastest typing, “I should head out. I’ve got to meet some friends at the library in twenty minutes.”

Keith hoped Shiro didn’t notice his mood immediately sink. “Sure, I should too. Hunk’s having a panic attack. He thinks I got alcohol poisoning in the middle of the night and keeled over.”

They stood from their seats. Keith gathered their garbage and dumped it before Shiro had a chance to do the same, but Shiro caught the door first and held it for him on their way out. Keith scraped by as close to Shiro’s chest as he could, inhaling the scent he’d now smelled enough to identify as pine trees. They hesitated outside.

Looking up at Shiro, the hanging flower baskets swung behind him and floated lazy pink petals around the fluffy top of his head, like the gentlest halo. But, tenderness existed _in_ him too, in his arms, and his chest, and his heart. Keith didn’t need to know him longer than he did to see the sunshine radiating through the layers of his skin. He hoped he was glowing, too, or had enough pull to keep Shiro from losing interest.

“What are you doing at the library?” Keith asked.

“We’re all studying our own thing. It’s my friends from freshman year; none of us have the same major, but we keep hanging out like we aren’t graduating this summer,” Shiro said, growing wistfully distant at his mention of the future.

“It’s cool that you’ve stuck together.” Idiot. Obvious. Stupid thing to say.

“It hasn’t always been easy,” he passed a small smile. “Mostly with Lotor. He’s an ass.”

Keith agreed, “Yeah. I’ve wanted to tape Lance’s mouth shut more times than I’ve wanted to hear him talk.”

Shiro nudged him deviously. “Maybe we should make them hang out together, instead.”

Keith refrained from mentioning that it would leave them free to see each other, too.

When they said goodbye, Shiro left with five minutes to catch his group, and Keith with that same empty pit growing in his chest. It hadn’t been filled the night before, cemented shut and repairs completed; but with vodka buzzing through his system, the hole was manageable.

Speaking of vodka – the walk back to Alfor gave Keith a chance to read through the thirty messages he’d drunkenly delivered to Shiro.

Oh, god. No. No no no. These were awful, unbearable.

He’d never forgive himself.

Not even by the following Friday, when he and Shiro studied for approximately fifteen minutes and spent the rest of their hour and a half together on the library lawn, stargazing like dumb teenagers.

“I don’t think you really know where any constellations are,” Shiro teased. The early-fall night didn’t call for jackets, or anything more than shorts in actuality, but Shiro brought a hoodie he spread over the grass and shared as a blanket.

“Shut up, I do too. It’s the light pollution,” Keith grumbled and squinted into the darkness. The campus trees crowded much of their view, but it wasn’t the stars that kept Keith’s heart thudding like a jackrabbit. If he turned ever so slightly to the left, he’d catch sight of Shiro underneath the distant streetlamp glow, and his chest would splinter into sickly sweet static.

Shiro rolled onto his stomach and plucked a strand of grass. Keith watched him tie it between his fingers, and knot the sliver into a bow.

“Wow,” Keith commented.

Shiro delicately placed it on top of Keith’s head. “Now you’re beautiful.”

“Gee, thanks.” He prayed his longing ache wasn’t visible in the darkness.

He said the same prayer when they met to study the next Tuesday evening, once he was past his friends’ suggestive questions and sidelong looks during dinner.

“ _You’ve_ got a _date_! _You’ve_ got a _date_!” Lance repeated in sing-song, well, until Keith socked him in the stomach.

“Hunk! I’ve been hit!” he wheezed. Hunk comforted him, but ultimately concurred Lance was asking for it.

Keith tried to draw strength from that moment’s satisfaction in the seclusion of his cramped dorm. All the while, he cursed himself. He insisted they study in his room after making some excuse like not wanting to put Shiro out, but Keith was testing a hypothesis. Maybe, in the least flattering light on campus, in the worst dorm of the building, under the most stressful material Slav had assigned them in six weeks of curriculum, he wouldn’t want to jump Shiro’s bones every time he saw the man from a different angle.

So far, he wasn’t getting the results he’d hoped for. Especially not when Shiro came over in tight athletic shorts and a muscle tank that was cut open from his hip bone to his shoulders.

“What is behavioral isolation?” Shiro quizzed him.

“It’s…it’s when two species have different courtship rituals that prevent them from interbreeding.”

“Two _populations_.”

“Ah, fuck it,” Keith slapped his notebook shut. It was the fourth time he’d used the wrong classification. “This is ridiculous. He’s gonna put five out of forty definitions on the quiz. It’s a waste of time.”

Shiro closed his laptop, and set it on the floor. He and Keith had their backs pressed against the wall, lounging in his bed, with their legs overlapping at any moment. In retrospect, Keith didn’t understand how he thought this was the least sensual place to sit. It was tiny. Maybe he’d sabotaged himself on purpose.

He flopped onto his pillow. “When’s the quiz, again?”

“Next Wednesday.” Shiro hunched over his lap. “We’ve got time. I mean, if you don’t want to study any more tonight.”

Keith crossed his arms over his face. He felt Shiro moving to sit next to him at the head of the bed, his legs hanging off the side of the cramped twin mattress. Later, Keith would swear Shiro’s hand was floating over his head like he was going to touch him. But when he peeked through, all he caught was the chiseled side of Shiro’s jaw and the pursed dip of his eyebrows that appeared when Shiro concentrated.

Shiro asked, “Would you want to get together this Friday? I’m free.”

“Yes, absolutely,” nearly burst out of him, but Keith swallowed it when he remembered his plans. “I can’t. I promised Pidge I’d go with her, Lance and Hunk to that discount costume store in town.”

“For Halloween?”

“Yeah. I think she wants us to match, and apparently all the good costumes will be gone if we don’t get them three weeks before.”

Shiro smirked, “I can’t picture you in anything that’s not black.”

“Maybe she’ll let me be Kylo Ren.”

“The Star Wars guy?”

“What? Have you never seen Star Wars?” Keith lifted himself into a sitting position, accusation sharp in his features.

Shiro shrugged. Keith mimicked him.

“What do you mean, you’ve never seen a single Star Wars movie? Not even the prequels?”

“No,” Shiro tilted his chin into his chest indignantly, “I didn’t know it was required.”

“Well, it is!” Keith’s eyes were wide, and outraged. “Episode four came out in ’77. That’s like, right around your birth. It should’ve been playing in your delivery room.”

“Ha-ha,” Shiro deadpanned. “I guess I’ve got to catch up. Do you want to lend me your DVDs? You have to have copies if you’re this into it, which, by the way, is a total shock. I didn’t peg you for a nerd.”

Keith shook his head. “I don’t, but Lance owns the boxset. He's the ultimate nerd, and loves to remind me. I’ll steal his and we’ll watch them together.”

“Oh, yeah,” Shiro agreed readily. “I’ll need an expert making sure I don’t confuse Chewbacca for Obi Wan.”

“At least you know their names.”

“Chewbacca’s the girl, right?”

“I can tell that’s a joke, but it’s still terrible.”

“Sorry.”

As Shiro collected his things on his way down the hall, Keith considered texting his group chat and asking if he was allowed to do what he was about to. He decided forgiveness would be easier than permission.

“Hey, you should come with us,” he spewed before Shiro could start to say goodbye.

“Where?” Shiro’s interest piqued.

Keith forced himself to remain casual. He buried the jitters in his stomach. Hopefully. “The costume place. It’ll be fun.”

“If I go, will Pidge force me into an outfit?”

“Only if you give her the chance.”

“Then, yeah, that sounds great,” Shiro beamed.

“Cool. I’ll text you,” Keith said, with one hand on his door.

“See you tomorrow,” Shiro waved over his shoulder.

The group was not as agreeable.

He met them in Hunk and Lance’s dorm the next evening, and was the unintentional catalyst for Lance’s Mario Kart victory.

Pidge slammed the Wiimote’s buttons and dropped bananas behind her with a ferocity Keith feared, while Lance rode her bumper and attempted to aim his green shells. He was usually a great shot, but with the last ice cream sandwich on the line, Pidge was more determined than usual.

“I have a question,” Keith began. Hunk flipped through a magazine on their bottom bunk, and made room for Keith to sit at the opposite end nearest to the television. Pidge and Lance perched side by side on desk chairs, while Keith leaned back in the mattress to avoid Pidge’s wild elbows as she steered like a lost chicken.

“Spit it out, dude,” Lance shouted. “It’s the second lap!”

Keith was stone-faced. “Would it be okay if I asked Shiro to come out with us Friday night?”

“Uh, no. You’ll be distracted. I need everyone at full attention to – oh, fuck you, Lance! Super star is a loser’s game.” Pidge’s nose wrinkled with disgust. “I need everyone at full attention to get the best costumes. We have to win the contest.”

“What contest?” Hunk asked without lowering his reading material, Martha Stewart’s cover headshot projecting her dead eyes around the room.

Lance shouted, his eyes glazed over, “The costume contest, babe. Winner gets Guitar Hero for the PS4. Pidge and I have been lusting after it since they announced it a month agooooo-oh no you don’t! Get back in your goddamn crib, Baby Peach!”

The game’s whistle blew, announcing the final lap.

“Are you sure he can’t come?” Keith watched the sea of emotions flicker between Lance and Pidge with one of their victories in arm’s reach. “Isn’t he a judge, anyway? Don’t you want his opinion?”

“That’s cheating,” Hunk said.

Keith scoffed. “Do you guys care about that?”

“Duh,” Pidge said. Her cart skidded around a corner with the finish line on the horizon.

“Okay. The thing is, I already invited him.”

“You _what_?!” Pidge turned from the screen at the final second. Lance zoomed past her and into first place, standing from his chair with his arms raised in triumph.

“Yes! I am unconquerable!” He cheered for himself and leapt to the minifridge in search of his prize.

“Why would you do that? Are you trying to sabotage us?” Pidge demanded, the game forgotten.

“No, I just – it slipped out. I didn’t think it’d be an issue,” Keith ran his fingers through his hair.

Pidge sighed, and shoved her glasses up her nose a little too forcefully. She pulled them back and rubbed at the new red indents in her skin. “Fine. But you better ask him out, and we better win, or you owe me a slice of chocolate cake every dinner for the rest of the semester.”

“What do you mean? It’s a buffet. We all get an unlimited amount of cake.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to stand up to get it anymore. Lance keeps moving my chair three feet away from the table and denying it.”

“Fine.”

They shook on it. Keith didn’t bother mentioning his agreement to Shiro, but he did explain that he had to convince Pidge he was only coming as a friend, not a judge.

“As a friend,” Shiro repeated. Keith hoped it was with disappointment. God, did he hope it was in want for something more.

They piled into Hunk’s van with Lance riding shotgun, Pidge in the middle seat, and Keith scooting Shiro into the third row where the roof lights didn’t reach. Keith warned them that if they sniggered, made a joke, or so much as mouthed something about him and, in their words, his massive, undeniable crush, he would make sure they failed every test until they graduated. Hunk and Pidge understood, but Lance took some convincing. When Keith was seconds away from dumping his Xbox 360 into an overflowing bathtub, Lance took his words to heart.

“Alright, game plan,” Pidge started to strategize. They pulled into the costume store’s parking lot twenty minutes later with little to nothing. The Avengers, Power Rangers, and Teletubbies had been scrapped. Lance suggested a group of minions, and was almost forced to wait in the car. Scooby Doo was in the lead, hinging on Hunk in a Scooby suit and Keith wearing Fred’s ascot, but the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were also in play. Once faced with the size of the store, they decided it would be best to split up.

“Hunk, Lance, you guys take the left side. Keith and Shiro can take the right, and I’ll go for the middle,” she directed.

The group disbanded with twenty-eight minutes on the clock, and a plan to meet at the back with their findings. They trudged onto the Chuck E. Cheese-inspired swirl carpet, and forced their way through a massive square room with eight long rows of costumes dangling from metal racks. The wood paneled walls were as dingy as the man working the counter, and both looked like they hit their prime in the seventies.

“Have you and Allura ever dressed up together?” Keith asked, wandering along his side of the aisle.

He heard Shiro inching through plastic-bagged suits and the ruffles of princess dresses behind him. “No. We thought about it last year, but Allura just started dating her girlfriend, and they went together instead.”

“What’d you do?”

“I stayed in. Halloween parties aren’t really my thing. What about you?”

“We were in Galaxy Hall last year, and those advisers didn’t really give a shit. Hunk, Lance and I watched the second Purge in my dorm and ate three packs of microwave popcorn.”

“I hope Shay and I can do better than that,” Shiro chuckled. “Not that that’s not fun; it sounds great. If I wasn't an RA, that's probably where I'd be.”

Keith grabbed a costume pack off its hanger and turned to Shiro. “Do you think this is what Pidge was talking about?”

Facing an adult’s Shrek suit and the matching Fiona in tow, Shiro burst into laughter. “I’ll wear it with you if you want. I don’t think it’s exactly Raphael and Leonardo, though.”

Keith grimaced, “I didn’t think you’d be so on-board. Let’s keep going.”

They hunted further down the row, and then the next, and the next, until they were combing through the border of Pidge’s territory.

“When’s the last time you dressed up?” Shiro wondered, and toyed with the fur of a plastic werewolf mask.

“Uh…” Keith thought. “Never?”

“Really? Not even as a kid?” Shiro looked over his shoulder, trying to gauge Keith from the back of his head.

“Nope. My parents didn’t care when they were together, my mom left by third grade, and then…my dad always had plans at the bar,” Keith admitted. “I didn’t want to, either.”

“Oh,” Shiro paused. “Did you go trick or treating?”

“If the neighbors’ kids were going, they’d invite me. But I never had a costume, so I only went once when the woman next door cut holes in one of her sheets for me. My dad threw away the candy anyway.” Keith had slowed to a stop. He sensed Shiro coming beside him, and the palm he placed on Keith’s shoulder. His heart raced, but the uneasy stirring in his stomach was back, like it always was when he felt pitied.

“Don’t worry about it,” Keith said, harder than he meant to. “It wasn’t important. What’d you do when you were little?” _Please change the subject. Please._ This wasn’t like the last time, when they first studied in Shiro’s bedroom. Shiro was sorry now, and it was nauseating to think about.

Shiro didn’t flinch. His body was close. His lips, inches from Keith’s. Time slowed. Keith watched him struggle. They floated there in the space of Shiro’s almost-sentiments, until the words evaporated on the tip of his tongue. Instead, he pointed to a costume Keith blocked.

“Is that Velma?”

Keith’s attention faltered at first, but he plucked the plastic bag off the hanger. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Nice. Let’s see what Pidge has,” Shiro gave him a final pat and strode to the end of the aisle.

Time ran out, and the group joined again in the center of the store. Together, they found a complete set of both Scooby Doo and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Lance and Hunk’s surprise collection of My Little Pony ensembles. Fortunately, they were overruled. They voted in favor of the turtles almost unanimously, with Lance bummed their ponies were trashed and abstaining from the poll. They paid, Keith gripping his credit card and doing careful math to figure his new balance, and climbed back into Hunk’s van with their costumes distributed.

The ride home wasn’t noticeably less quiet since Pidge, Hunk and Lance debated the best way to kill the Rat King in the front, but an energy vibrated in the third row. Keith left his hand on the middle seat while following the town’s evening lights out the window, but occasionally (frequently) catching sight of Shiro.

Pidge was the first to say goodbye from her room on the ground floor. Keith and Shiro waved as the elevator dropped them on the third, and Lance blew a kiss as the doors closed on him and Hunk. They stopped in front of Keith’s room, the pulsing air from the costume store tying them together in silence.

“I don’t want you to feel bad for me,” Keith fired. So much for silence.

Shiro was taken aback. “Sorry.”

Keith crossed his arms, and leaned against the doorframe. He kept his head lowered with his eyes on Shiro’s waist. “I don’t like to talk about my family. It keeps coming up around you, but I don’t. And I’m fine.”

“You don’t look it,” Shiro huffed.

Keith glared at Shiro’s belt buckle. “How would you know?”

Shiro rolled his eyes. His patience was thinning. “Come on. You think no one’s noticed? I can’t be the only person who sees the way you freeze, or heard you yell in your sleep. Is that what those noise complaints are?”

“Nobody else has ever been this annoying about it, that’s for sure.”

Keith glowered through his hair when Shiro closed the distance between them in one stretch. He glanced at the surrounding dorms, though the building was empty, and kept his voice low. “I can think of ten good reasons why. The biggest one is your face. It screams that you want to punch me—”

“I’m not going to,” Keith snapped, jerking his head up. “But you’re asking for it.”

“How? By caring? By wanting to help?”

“Yes! By shoving your nose where it doesn’t belong. If I wanted to talk about it, I would, okay?”

“You wanted to talk a couple weeks ago when you were drunk!”

“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you! Not a counselor.” Shiro’s mouth was so fucking close. His eyes, usually steady and like home, were feral and jumping from Keith’s bared teeth to his scowl. Their breathing synchronized in shallow frustration. A flush crawled up Keith’s neck and burned in his cheeks, but he couldn’t back down now.

Shiro was the first to break contact. He inhaled deeply, centering himself, and yet, didn’t step away. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just…I like you, a lot. Allura says I care too much sometimes.”

Keith softened. “It’s – it’s okay.”

They held each other there in the tension of the moment. The crackle of – what? chemistry? – kept them still, but not entirely. A pull dragged him to Shiro’s skin, though he couldn’t be sure if it was mutual, the gap that separated their bodies melted second by second. Shiro’s eyelids fluttered as he looked into Keith, and Keith craned for him in turn.

The elevator _ding_!ed in the lobby, and Keith wasn’t there anymore. He turned, squared his shoulders, and backed himself into his door knob.

Shiro cleared his throat abruptly. He was curt, “Talk to you Monday.”

“Later,” Keith squeaked. His hands trembled as he shoved the key into its lock, and the door slammed behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOOOOOOOO ok this took forever. this chapter alone is like 7500 words?? for some reason?? and is my biggest yet! i know i said that last chapter, and this probably wont be the last time i say it either lmao.  
> thank u to everyone leaving comments!! it's so nice to hear what people think!  
> u can talk to me here or on my tumblr, xpalescentdaydream!  
> and what abt u? tmnt, or scooby?? maybe mlp?? are there better group costumes?? do u lust after the minions in the chilly fall months? lemme know!


	6. Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been weeks since the Almost Kiss, and the road's been... not-so-smooth. How will Shiro and Keith mend the bump in their relationship, without actually having a relationship?

Shiro peered out under the shock of his white bangs. Keith had been diligently taking notes for the last couple weeks. Well, he always had, but he’d been _too_ focused since The Incident. Remembering it twisted Shiro’s stomach in half. He’d definitely scared him off. Allura told him to go for it, and what did he do? He leaned. But then, Keith jumped.

“It wasn’t a rejection,” Allura argued from Shiro’s floor, crisscross with a pack of cookies in her lap. “He was probably nervous.”

Shiro slung himself over the side of his loft bed. “He wasn’t interested in the first place. And now what? Go to class on Monday like nothing happened?”

She shrugged. “Yes. Nothing did happen. It’ll all work out, but you need a plan and some space. You’re a chronic overthinker, dear. Oreo?”

But space was the last thing Shiro wanted. Sitting next to Keith was like being lab partners with a frozen tundra, and whatever rapport they’d had before died the moment the elevator rang that night. Shiro was so lost in the painful silence their chemistry became that he didn’t notice Slav dismiss the room until the tundra spoke.

“Hey, time to go,” Keith said, prodding him in the shoulder.

“Oh, yeah,” Shiro shuffled his notebook and pen into his bag. “Thanks.”

They still came and left together, thankfully, but it wasn’t the same when they were forced apart by two feet of awkward static.

“Your friends are ready for the Halloween party tonight, right?” Shiro asked. The last three weeks pushed Shiro to be inventive, posing questions that took more than a yes or no answer but didn’t border on outright friendship.

“Yeah. Pidge is pretty nervous.”

“Oh, you’re gonna be great. She shouldn’t worry.”

“We keep telling her.”

“Yeah.”

…

Shiro wondered if stress could cause his lungs to cave in. “Which turtle are you?”

“Raphael. The red one. Lance thought it fit. I don’t really know. I’ve never seen the show.”

“Oof, I’ll have to take points off for that tonight.” Shiro hoped, begged that Keith’s cough was a laugh. He’d take anything at this point, however desperate and pathetic it felt, but doubted Keith did more than clear his throat.

Keith slowed to a stop as the path split, leaning toward the food courts. “Well, this is me.” He flopped his overgrown hair out of his eyes, popping a lump in Shiro’s throat. “See you tonight?”

“Yep. Be there or be square.” Shiro tried to swallow his immediate regret. _I’m going to have an aneurism. That was the most idiotic –_

“ – lame, ridiculous line you could have used,” Allura berated him, though she grinned like the night he scored her stuffed lion at the summer carnival.

“…And?” Shiro huffed. He put his head down in the sticky residue breeding on the Starbucks tabletop. Let bacteria eat him alive. What else did he have to lose?

Through the local college radio station the off-campus Starbucks needily kept alive and thriving, he heard Allura giggle. “It’s kind of cute how pathetic you are.”

“Thanks?”

“Oh,” she swatted him. “You know what I mean. I’ve never seen you fall so hard for a boy before, and you had a particularly slutty sophomore year. You need to be careful.”

Shiro peeled himself halfway up and glowered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You had at least one guy from every fraternity on campus, and you had feelings for all of them. You were out of control,” she accused.

“I was exploring my sexuality.”

“Yeah, sluttily.” Allura smirked and took a sip of her drink, Matcha something? In the shadows of the coffee house, chewing on the end of a plastic straw, she looked especially bossy. “Not that there’s anything wrong with ‘exploration,’ or copious sex, but your big, mushy heart’s the size of –”

“Allura, please. I’m going to lose my mind if I keep blowing it with Keith, and I haven’t talked to him outside of biology in almost a month. This might be my only shot. Help. Me.”

Shiro didn’t often beg, and Allura was well aware.

“Alright. Get a grip, Takashi,” she sat at full attention and pushed her fluffy green drink aside. Leadership glinted between her shimmery eyeshadow and the white blazer she wore for class. “You have a golden opportunity tonight at this Halloween social. Are you going to crawl in with soy frappe all over your cheek?” She prodded the side of his face pressed hopelessly to the coffee slime. “Or, are you marching in like the bear you are?”

“Bear?” Shiro frowned. “We talked about this. I’m not a bear, and you don’t know what that means.”

“It was either that, or twink. And I know you’re not a twink. Keith’s a twink. Are you going to let this- this lone twink take you down?” The hollows of her cheeks deepened under the dull lighting and the indie garage band’s whine bouncing from exposed brick wall to exposed brick wall.

“You don’t know what a twink is, either.”

Allura leaned closer until her minty breath wafted directly into his nostrils, and an unspoken threat hung between them. “Shiro. Answer my question. Are you going to let this twink cripple you emotionally? Are you going to lose?”

He exhaled, deep and heavy. “No.”

“No!” She cheered. “No, you are not! Pick yourself up. I’ve been telling you from the beginning you need a plan. If you want to win him over, we have work to do.”

“I forgot how competitive you are. I haven’t been to one of your rugby games in a while, have I?”

“You’ve been busy sulking.” Allura picked through the leather case beneath her feet and unleashed her laptop. The pink double-Venus sticker plastered to the lid confronted Shiro upside down as he refused to budge. Until she flicked him in the ear.

They didn’t leave until Shay sent a panicked text wondering where the purple and orange string lights were, she could only find the little white holiday ones, and the party hinged on lighting, and there were only three hours remaining, and if she couldn’t find the lights maybe they should postpone? Would the residents hate a November First party?

Allura dropped him off in front of Alfor with the promise to return in time for the costume contest, her girlfriend in tow.

“Really, you don’t have to drag Acxa to our dorm party. It’s no big deal,” Shiro reassured her.

Allura waved him off, “We already have costumes, so we might as well stop by. Her sorority sisters understand.”

“Alright. See you.” Shiro stepped from her little white hybrid with two thuds on its roof as it zoomed from campus.

Shay and a flurry of stored decorations ambushed him in the doorway. They scrambled to plaster paper skeletons to the rec room walls before the clock struck eight, but when it did, they admired their work and dabbed at their sweat with themed napkins. Their snack bowls, open plastic skulls, housed the cheapest variety candy bags Walmart sold and haunted the middle of their bright orange tablecloths. Shay recruited the nearest janitor and had him switch out the ordinary bulbs for black lights, which forced Shiro to flip the couch cushions to their least offensively stained sides. The karaoke machine held its own under their makeshift spotlight (the one white light Shay asked the janitor to leave alone) and only took her twenty-five frantic minutes to hook to their television. Though they couldn’t serve alcohol, they’d at least supplied an amount and variety of soda liters that allowed the kids to make Suicides. They were ready.

A tray of face paint and their costume changes later, the rec room was open for business. The first flood of residents brought in thieves hunting for free pizza and free pizza alone, which wouldn’t be delivered for another half hour, as per Shay’s expert trap. The second wave washed in the competitors – small groups in Stranger Things outfits, Mario characters, the Powerpuff Girls, and, behold, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Lance hurried ahead to claim an empty table and untouched candy bowl, his fellow turtles straggling behind. Hunk’s purple mask flittered over his shoulders as he shuffled to keep Lance within his reach, Keith in red and Pidge in blue trailing Lance as their orange, momentary leader.

Shiro’s ears thundered. His big move would come later, once the winners were announced. For now, though, he could make small talk. He _had_ to make small talk. It was part of the plan.

Weaving through the crowd gave Shiro a chance to check in on the other residents; “You guys getting enough to drink? Great, have fun!” “Oh, love the mustache, dude! It’s so realistic.” “That’s a really…unique take on Princess Peach. I never would’ve pictured her as a zombie!” And he slipped closer to Keith with every passing compliment. Shiro cleared the final couple, a Dwight and Angela bickering over a splash of soda that landed on the Angela’s sweater, and landed at Keith’s feet.

“Hey guys!” Shiro intruded. The table looked up from their huddle as he popped through the tense energy bubbling them. He purposely focused on the other three turtles, avoiding the straight black mullet to his left. “How’s it going?”

“Hey, Shiro!” Hunk matched his enthusiasm. “Great party!”

“Thanks. Uh, what’s going on? Did I interrupt a board meeting?” Lance was hunched over, resting his chin on his crossed arms with an unopened KitKat at the tip of his nose. Beside him, Pidge was suspiciously tight-lipped and picking at her fingernails. Hunk patted the sweat running from his forehead into the edges of his purple polyester band, and Keith was quiet, as Shiro was coming to expect.

Hunk fumbled for the words. “Well, you see, we were just, uh, saying, that, in this current…political climate, that – “

Pidge interrupted, “ – the most popular candy! We were talking about the most popular candy. Lance thinks it’s KitKats, and Hunk and I are sure it’s…Skittles. We think it’s Skittles. But Keith refuses to take either side. He’s very diplomatic.”

Shiro heard a thud under the table as Pidge’s face twisted. He glanced down at Keith, who had only flinched.

“Yeah, sure,” Shiro played along. “You might want to consider Snickers, or doing something fun instead. Is Lance okay? He seems to be taking this pretty seriously for Halloween.”

Another thud. Lance yelped out of his seat, but settled to glare at Keith. “I’m great!” Lance erupted. “I’m spectacular! Keith never tells us how he really feels and I’m loving it! It’s a goddamn delight!”

“That’s a great costume, Shiro! What are you, the alien from Alien?” Pidge shouted.

He wasn’t sure how his tattered jean shorts, sleeveless flannel, fake neckbeard, and dog-ear headband screamed slimy deep space monster. “Uh, no.”

Keith acknowledged him for the first time. Shiro strained to see anything emotional in him, anything at all, but Keith was faster. He was gone sooner than he came.

He mumbled, “You’re a pretty good werewolf.”

“Thanks,” Shiro said, though he locked his focus on Pidge. “I wear it every year.”

Pidge bobbed like a chicken on the run. “Yeah, werewolf. That’s what I meant. Did you cut those sleeves off yourself?”

Shiro laughed, stilted, “No, but I did chop off the jeans.”

A pause extended around them a full 360 degrees.

“You guys need drinks. Keith, wanna help me get everyone a cup?” Shiro tentatively hovered his hand over Keith’s shoulder.

Keith shook his head, “Actually, we’re good. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh, alright. I’ll see you guys later, then.”

They let him leave in a chorus of awkward goodbyes and a promise to change the topic. He was busy, anyway. There were games to run and fledgling adults to monitor. And he had a plan.

Shay bumped into him, her Batgirl mask blurring the edges of her vision.

“How do you think it’s going?” she clutched her cape’s pointed tails.

“Everything’s going to work out.”

Shay nudged him, “Are you okay? You seem tired, Takashi.”

He blinked. “Uh-huh. Is it time?”

She nodded and led Shiro to the front of the room. He took the microphone from the karaoke machine and tapped it until the crowd went quiet and a sea of masked teenagers gawked back at them.

“Welcome to the Alfor 2017 Halloween party, everyone!” He began. They clapped, whooped, and waited. “You know we have a costume contest later tonight, and that first place wins the new Guitar Hero.” Another break for applause. “But, before we get there, we’ve set up games and other small prizes. Don’t forget to bob for apples, pin the black cat on the broomstick, and make good use of our very own karaoke. Drinks are at the back, pizza’s unboxed, and get spooky!”

They threw a last woo and broke into sections Shiro split his attention between. He tried to keep himself distracted and prevent choking hazards – but it was a small room, and there were only so many times he could count the carpet stains without wandering to Keith as Lance wheezed his way out of a bucket with an apple clenched between his teeth, or Keith when Hunk smeared a mini cupcake across Pidge’s chin, or Keith cheating the blindfold to pin the black cat on Lance’s ass. He didn’t realize how much time had passed until Allura and Acxa burst in.

He plowed through the spectators to meet them. “You guys look amazing!”

“Oh, thanks!” Allura wrapped herself around Acxa’s waist and tucked strands of her long green wig behind her ear. They stood tall and gracious in Allura’s Sailor Neptune and Acxa’s Sailor Uranus, an air of sapphic dignity floating around them like a forcefield.

Acxa’s smile was so slight, Shiro was unsure it had ever been there. She spoke just as he remembered – with a cold undercurrent built in to keep their distance. “Nice seeing you again, Shiro.”

“You too!” Was this what over-eager golden retrievers felt like?

Acxa continued, “So, which one’s the boy?”

Before Shiro could raise a bushy, agitated eyebrow, Allura cut in, “Lotor told her. He can’t stop talking about it.”

“God,” Shiro bottled his exasperation, “You’ll see him soon enough. Watch for the red Ninja Turtle that won’t talk to me. The contest’s about to start.”

“Isn’t it already time?” Allura showed him the clock on her phone screen. “I tried to get us here on schedule.”

“Yeah,” Shiro said. “I’d better go. See you after?”

“See you after.” Allura’s support and thin little fingers pushed him back to the front. He took the floor with a call for Shay to join him. It was Shiro’s confidence that was going to get him through this, and now wasn’t the time to falter.

“Alright, Alfor! It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for,” he announced. The room died down in a rumble of clapping.

Shay borrowed the microphone. “Will the costume participants please form a line against the far wall!” They paused for the shuffle of kids getting out of their seats and wigs adjusted in a bulging line of variety groups.

She passed it back to Shiro. “Let’s go over this one more time,” he pulled a stack of note cards from the deep pocket of his jean shorts, “You’ll pose here for ten to fifteen seconds before you move to the back of the line. I’ll pass these out, and everyone’ll write in their votes. We’ll announce the winners once we’ve done a final count.”

The girl in the Buttercup costume spoke up, “I thought you guys were the judges?”

Shay answered, “’Judge’ is a loose definition. We didn’t know how to say we were leading the contest, but you guys get to pick. Also, please don’t vote for yourselves. It’s rude.”

“Okay! Are we ready?” Shiro rallied.

The room clapped.

“Let’s go!”

Shay hit play on her phone, and The Monster Mash thudded from her Bluetooth speaker. It was anyone’s bet who got the most applause. Shiro assumed the Stranger Things quartet were obvious winners, but the Backstreet Boys in solid white were well appreciated when they burst into “I Want It That Way.”

Halfway through, Keith and his turtles took the front. They got an average reaction until Pidge elbowed Lance in the ribs to give the people what they want. He swooped Hunk into a kiss, and Pidge hoarded the audience’s cheers until Shay hurried them off and shouted for whoever came next.

They tallied the last vote and scribbled down third, second, and first. Shiro steadied himself.

“We have the winners!”

The room hushed, some crossing their fingers and others gripping their friends. The Powerpuff Girls linked arms, united.

“In third place, winners of the thirty-dollar Target gift card…” Shiro paused, “…Naruto and, uh, his friends!”

“It’s Sasuke and Sakura!” a voice at the back called. The three hugged each other, took a bow, and were thrown honorary discount candy.

“In second place! And new owners of a sixty-dollar Amazon card…” The kids held their breath. Their pimpled fear froze the show.

As he fought through the anticipation, Shiro’s voice built, “…The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!”

The characters surrounding them stepped back to highlight the blatant disappointment Pidge and Lance wallowed in, though Hunk and Keith casually waved and gave thanks. It was easier to watch Allura twirl her wig than make eye contact with Keith and in that moment, Shiro was deeply invested in the plastic green hair looping around Allura’s finger. Maybe too invested.

Shay coughed beside him.

Shiro startled, “And last, but certainly not least…Can we get a drumroll?”

Fifty pairs of chocolate-sticky hands rhythmically pounded their knees. Eagerness swallowed them whole. The kids exchanged knowing eyes and hopeful smiles, though they all felt what was coming.

Shiro cried, “Backstreet’s back, alright!”

The Backstreet Boys leapt into an uproar, fist pumps blazing. One of them stumbled into Shiro and swiped the microphone – “This took four bottles of gel! We got frosted tips! We earned it!” – before Shiro could grapple it back under his control.

“Thank you, everyone, for coming out tonight and hopefully not voting for your own costume. The party’s not over yet, so don’t go anywhere. And, let’s hear it for our winners!”

Applause faded into general commotion as Shay put her party playlist on again and hurried off to grab the prizes from the storage room. Shiro loitered in place with the karaoke mic wound tightly in his fist, his mind somewhere else and ignorant to the line waiting for their turn at Lady Gaga’s Poker Face.

Someone squeezed his arm. Acxa, with Allura behind her. “Take your chance while you have it.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” he mumbled. “Thanks.” Shiro absently waded into the crowd and struggled not to turn back. He barely registered Allura’s final word of advice, or rather, couldn’t hear it over the adrenaline thrumming. He targeted Hunk’s big green shoulders and made his way over.

Shiro broke through the party’s sound barrier into their group, and caught the tail-end of Lance’s outburst.

“…we have sixty Amazon bucks and two liars between us!”

“Hey, Shiro,” Pidge warned; him or Lance, he wasn’t sure.

Lance snapped around, vicious and embarrassed. He spat a quick, “Hey,” and fumed for the punch bowl.

“I’ll talk to him.” Shiro started to go after, but stopped at a tug on the back of his shirt.

Hunk shifted weight from one foot to the other. “Don’t. He’ll cool down on his own. He needs to think first.”

Shiro cleared his throat before it could totally close in on him. “Alright. Sorry to interrupt, but could I borrow you, Keith?”

They looked at each other for the first time. Keith was hunched in the corner of his friends with his bony shoulders around his ears and a definite scowl underneath his costume. He wanted to set…Anyone? Everyone? On fire. Neither moved in the limp gap dangling dangerously close to a real conversation. In his peripherals, Pidge’s stare bounced between them like ping pong balls.

Keith was the first to breathe. He straightened himself. “Sure.”

Shiro strode for the exit blind and hoped that Keith followed. He sped around the party, dodging sloshes of soda and keeping everyone upright simultaneously. Sweat inched down his spine in the heat of his nerves and sleeveless flannel. As he held the door for him, Keith luckily on his heels, Allura slunk through the masses to stand by Shiro’s side.

She cupped her hands and whispered in his ear, “Remember, you’re the bear!”

Shiro winced, knowing she saw the gratitude under his shame. It was facing Keith in the abandoned first floor with Allura, the party, and any safety net of RA busy work now muffled behind the media room that he wished for an hour ago when he was suffocated between the Pulp Fiction girl and Danny Zuko, doing his best to prevent heavy grinding.

Shiro gave Keith his first once-over alone in the hall and really admired his outfit. Even when they were on stage, his self-restraint kept him from actually noticing his friends’ matching costumes and, boy, was he grateful for this opportunity. The dark green polyester suit was only just looser than skin tight, but Keith was small enough inside that it bagged more like pajamas. The shell printed on his chest created the illusion of a huge, yellow six pack when below, his actual waist size was cinched by a tight brown belt that fastened with a giant “R.” His mask matched the patches around his elbows and knees, though the costume stopped at the worn sneakers Shiro knew he’d been wearing since tenth grade.

“What?” Keith demanded. Shiro hadn’t said anything in at least a minute.

“Nothing. Let’s go.” He bit his lip and ignored the grumble under Keith’s breath.

Walking beside the hyper-realistic turtle suit, Shiro’s panicked energy slowed to a mild itch, but spread like a rash as they forgot how to stand next to each other in the elevator.

They stopped on the fifth floor. Shiro showed them to the very back of the east wing until they were crammed into the corner beside the stairwell, hesitating before the smallest room in Alfor.

“What is this?” Keith edged around his back while Shiro fumbled in front of a solid grey door. He struggled to twist it aside using a key that flaked off late seventies’ rust but combined with his upper body strength, revealed the cement staircase and janitor’s shelves inside. The room stank of must and cleaning chemicals, but Shiro didn’t notice. He yanked on the metal chain sagging from the ceiling and a single lightbulb dimly lit piles of used rags and mops careening in their buckets.

“Seriously, what are we doing?” Keith leaned in after him, his feet still planted in the hallway, and watched Shiro bound up the staircase to a second door waiting at the top. He insisted, “What’s happening?”

“Come find out,” Shiro smiled lopsidedly. He was a gentle tangle of hope and anticipation. “I don’t bite.”

Keith scoffed. He glanced down the corridor. The fifth-floor dorms were silent with students either bobbing for apples or getting drunk at house parties. No one was there to witness.

Shiro grinned as Keith joined him. He propped the door ajar with the brick waiting on the other side, and another settled in the pit of his stomach.

They opened on the roof of the building. The perimeter was lined with metal fences, though they glittered under strings of fairy lights looped through their thick bars. In the center, one of Shiro’s blankets was spread wide. An array of chip bags and a bottle of sparkling cider lay on top beside two plastic solo cups and a small army of battery powered candles, flickering as though the October wind blew against real flames. His heart either stopped entirely or was beating too fast to feel; Shiro couldn’t tell the difference. He watched Keith closely. Neither of them said a word, though it finally felt like a change from their awkward dead air.

He wasn’t sure what came next. Allura brainstormed speeches with him that afternoon and they all vanished under the open sky and his uncertainty. Why hadn’t they thought of an escape plan? There was no way to play this off as anything other than what it was. And yet, they didn’t consider Keith running away, or reporting him to the school board for sexual harassment, or –

“Did you do this?” Keith wondered.

“Yes.”

Keith walked alongside the blanket to the far fence, tracing Shiro’s makeshift picnic. He stopped at the edge and leaned over the metal rung. Low, soft, and distant, he asked, “Why?”

Shiro followed, though he strayed a few feet behind. He refocused. _Why?_ The answers came easily, though complete honesty wasn’t exactly an option. He stepped to the fence, closing some of their distance. Keith didn’t turn to him but Shiro traced his profile in the fairy lights’ twinkle, following the smooth edges of his skin until meeting the ever-present red mask.

“Can you take that off?” Shiro gestured to it.

Keith’s hands fumbled behind his head and he stuffed it into his costume’s pocket. “Your turn,” he said.

“Oh, right.” Shiro tossed his wolf ear headband towards the blanket. All that was left were the street sounds below.

Keith breathed again, “Why?”

Shiro bore into him. If he was going this far, he had to see Keith for himself and Keith had to see him, too. “The short version? I miss you.”

“And the long version?” Keith struggled to hold on to his second mask, the layer of indifference cracking under Shiro’s pressure.

“That night at your door…” Keeping his voice above a whisper took effort. Shiro’s knuckles went white gripping the metal rung. “…I knew what I was doing, and I wasn’t going to stop, not if you didn’t want me to. We haven’t talked about it, or anything, since and… I miss you. Hanging out with you, studying, Slav’s class, all of it. We changed, and I’ve been kicking myself for it every day.”

Shiro paused. He scanned Keith for any waver, but Keith averted his eyes from the emotional car crash Shiro skidded into. He couldn’t blame him. Keith’s cheeks were pinking, though, just like they did the first time Shiro talked to him in their elevator lobby. It spurred Shiro to continue.

“And, look. You don’t have to feel the same way. If you want me to stop bothering you, I will. No harm, no foul. But we work well together, like you said, and I think we do even better outside of biology. I’ve never been this committed to a science partner.” Keith hid his laugh over his shoulder. “And that’s the long version. I miss you, but I miss everything else, too. I want to see you again, in real life and not in a school-sponsored way. I’m trying to impress you here, and I hope it works, because Shay’s going to panic when she can’t find these lights. But, this was more important. I think you’re important. I think you’re funny, and smarter than you give yourself credit for, and you saw what I felt in my glow-in-the-dark stars. I think I’ve barely started to know you, and that I want more. Is that… fine, with you?”

The brick bottomed in Shiro’s stomach. He wasn’t planning on putting so many of his real feelings out there, but there they were. Had he offered too much? Keith wrung his hands over the edge of the railing and was lost in the town’s skyline. Shiro thought he saw the gears turning in his head. He hoped he did.

Keith cleared his throat. “You can’t expect a lot from me. People always have. They need me to be open, and I… I’m not good at it.”

Shiro nearly interrupted, but Keith picked up his pause.

“You’re a little easier. When we were in your bed, you didn’t–,” Keith tensed and let go, “– _make_ something out of it. And then I yelled at you, and I wanted to say sorry, but avoiding you was safer. And I never feel safe. I’m on edge all the time, but before we – before the _thing_ , I could just be with you. But I fucked it up and I didn’t know how to…to be close again, or closer or, uh…but, I, um… I missed you, too. A lot. And we’re fine, I mean, I’m fine with that. With more.”

He smiled, weak and half-dimmed.

Shiro’s chest blossomed.

“Are you hungry?”

Keith turned curious, “I guess? What do you have?”

Shiro offered his open palm without thinking. They both stopped short, unsure what next, but Shiro couldn’t relent. He floated in lonesome space with his oxygen supply waning until Keith grasped his hand like he wasn’t sure it was really there, and Shiro dragged them onto his blanket spread. They popped a family size bag of chips, the same kind Keith brought the first night in Shiro’s dorm, and poured themselves half the bottle.

“Cheers,” Shiro raised his glass.

Their fingers brushed as Keith tapped his cup against his, and they choked down colossal mouthfuls of apple cider trying to ignore the zap of static electricity stinging their knuckles. Then, everything melted away. They went back and forth like no time passed between their break or since they found their way to the roof. The stars studded above made it easy enough to feel like time stopped, and they took full advantage catching up on what they missed.

“Yeah, and I almost set her girlfriend on fire,” Shiro cackled.

“You’re kidding. I didn’t think there was anything Takashi Shirogane could be bad at. You’re the Bio Master,” Keith snorted. Shiro’s heart tugged at his throat. He realized how badly he’d missed that sound, but shivered as the way Keith said his full name prickled down his neck.

Shiro joked, taking another sip of his cider, “I guess it’s just cooking. Maybe Hunk can give me a lesson sometime.”

“He’d do anything to use Allura’s kitchen. I think it’s killing him to be stranded with his crockpot, but it doesn’t bother Lance as long as he keeps making chili.”

Oh, right. Shiro treaded his word choice carefully. “About Lance… was he okay?”

Keith bit the inside of his lip. He started and abandoned several answers before getting frustrated and spitting out what he could with his neck bent and hair curtaining him. “Lance has been all over me for the last three weeks. Really, the whole semester, but he kicked it up a notch. He’s sure that I’ve been in love with you since we sat next to each other in biology, and if I give it a chance we’ll live happily ever after.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“And he was mad we weren’t doing anything about it.”

Keith nodded. “Mostly at me, because he thought I was too proud or something. I don’t know. He just wants a hot plate for his dorm.”

Shiro chuckled, “And he’ll get one if we’re dating?”

“You might bend the rules for your boyfriend’s best friend.” Keith tossed his bangs aside and smirked. “But Lance doesn’t know how devout you are.”

Shiro had a retort ready when his phone chimed.

“Shit,” he hissed.

“What is it?” Keith scooted close enough that Shiro could feel his body heat warming his bare arm.

“It’s midnight. Party’s over, but Lotor’s here.”

“That’s bad?”

He sat up and texted Allura he’d be with her as soon as possible. “Where Lotor goes, Lotor brings booze and everybody’s secrets.”

“Sounds like a recipe for a good time,” Keith bit.

“I’m sorry. I’d rather stay with you, I promise,” Shiro stood and helped Keith to his feet in an apologetic grimace.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s your job,” Keith shrugged.

The roof was left as it lay although they replaced the doorstop inside and listened for the thick lock behind them. Shiro’s longer legs and sense of urgency put him three steps in front of Keith at all times. It was only with the elevator doors shut that Shiro felt a tingle at his fingertips and found Keith’s hand inching into his. It was comfortable, natural. Like they should’ve been doing this from the start. It brought back an urge Shiro was dying to satisfy. He’d fought it for the first six weeks of school and couldn’t handle his embarrassment for the next three, but now he had a chance.

Keith followed him as he drifted towards his cheek. When he grazed Keith’s skin, his breathing tempered. His hair was softer, and wavier, than he imagined it would be as he tucked it behind Keith’s ear. Finally, relief. He leaned away before the door could chime for the first floor, but Keith didn’t peel their hands apart. Shiro jogged for the disaster zone with Keith in tow until they reached the media room.

“It’s going to take a while for Lotor to leave,” Shiro warned, “and he’s very… _flirtatious_ on special occasions.”

“So, I should get upstairs,” Keith finished.

“I would if I were you.”

“Yeah, no big deal. Hunk and Lance are probably waiting outside my dorm anyway.”

“Good luck,” Shiro squeezed his hand.

Keith did the same, but as they let go, he touched Shiro’s bare bicep goodbye. “You, too.”

Once he knew Keith was safely on his way to the third floor, Shiro pushed through the double doors and surveyed the damage. Lotor lounged carelessly over the center sofa with a glass of wine that he leaned forward to sip, his lips pursed and red drink dribbling onto their cushions. Shay had vanished, but Allura and Acxa sat on the couch cattycorner to him. Their green and blonde wigs were piled on the coffee table and acting as a pillow for Allura’s feet, her heels kicked to the floor and toes wiggling in the open air, as Acxa was curled in her lap. Other than the very illegal wine bottle standing within Lotor’s effortless reach, it seemed like any other plain Tuesday night.

Allura saw him first. She bubbled, “Shiro! How did it go? Is it alright? Is he your bottom?”

Shiro shied away. “God, Allura. It was fine. Thank you, though, for your help.”

“That’s wonderful! And? Did you do it?”

“No, he didn’t,” Lotor interjected, “He’d be much more satisfied to be out from under my thumb."

Maybe it was Lotor’s smirk, or the sinister shape he plucked his bleached eyebrows in, or even his boots resting on the arm of the couch, but Shiro’s patience was thinning. Shiro ignored him, “Who cleaned?”

“Acxa and I helped your friend Shay while we waited for you.” Acxa glanced up at the mention of her name and, disinterested again, cranked her earbuds’ volume until her music faintly hummed out loud.

Shiro heaved himself onto the empty couch beside Lotor’s heels and facing Allura.

“A pirate every year, Lotor?” he prompted, tilting back against the cushion and letting his eyes sink shut.

“I wear it well.” Shiro could hear the teasing in his voice, along with the wine. Lotor was always smoother when he’d had a glass or six, but his tongue got caught in the points of his canines. “As if we’ve never seen your Teen Wolf, Fluffy.”

This wasn’t worth abandoning Keith. Shiro groaned and rubbed his palms into his face until he saw stars. “What’re you doing here? I thought the frat party was going ‘til four twenty, like it does every year.”

He heard the rustle of Lotor’s fake leather vest shuffling against the couch and peeked out under his exhaustion. Lotor swung his feet beneath him and leaned over the arm to sidle as close to Shiro as he could. It wasn’t as intimidating when he wobbled all the way there and sat on his billowing peasant sleeves, twice.

“The party was boring this year,” Lotor frowned in layers of black lipstick, “and I wanted to check on my favorite investment.”

Shiro dodged his taunt. “What happened, you could only get three kegs this year?”

“Tch. You know we’ve never had less than six. It was all very standard, and no one there potentially owes me eighteen grand.”

Shiro narrowed his eyes, now open and burning into Lotor’s. “And? I remember the rules.”

Lotor gloated, “Yes, you do. We all do! You kiss the boy from class before the semester’s over, and I pay your senior tuition, blah blah blah. Though, you’re running out of time and I hope you didn’t forget the contingency.”

It was becoming unbearable. Lotor looked down on him from his tilted chin and the point of his nose, premature victory bubbling on his surface. He was never great with subtlety when he felt so close to a win, and it always bothered their friends, but had never been pointed at them with this intensity before.

“How could I when you won’t stop reminding me?” Shiro griped.

“It’s one my greatest joys. Help me here, Shiro. I must’ve forgotten. What is it, again, the contingency?” Lotor preyed on Shiro’s frustration. He lapped it up.

But Shiro could play this game. Not giving Lotor what he wanted was his only perk.

“The bet’s off if I fall in love with him.”

“Have you?” They swiveled to Allura. Acxa had a protective reach over her shoulders and was nestled against Allura’s collarbone. She huddled closer, toward the vibration of Allura’s voice. It was too easy for Shiro to imagine that could be him and Keith, and worse knowing how much he wanted it.

“No,” he lied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY HI HELLO...I'M STILL ALIVE AND I STILL WANT TO FINISH THIS FIC.......  
> college sure threw me for a spin. it really got in the way of writing this, not to mention the five other versions of this chapter i tried and scrapped between january and now (literally, five) (at one point this chapter was named after a carly rae jepsen lyric) (it was a mess).  
> ANYWAY,,, hopefully i can return to more regular updates, or at least once a month lol. this is the first big fic i've ever gotten deep into, and I'M DETERMINED TO COMPLETE IT. you WILL see an ending from k for kissing!!! it just...might be a while, lmao.


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